Ghanaian farmers enlist drones to combat fall armyworm invasion

Farmers at Janga in the West Mamprusi municipality of the Northern Region [in Ghana] are learning how to use drones and other newly introduced chemicals meant to fight an invasion of fall armyworms in the area. The intervention comes at a time when the worms have wreaked havoc on maize and rice farms.

The exercise was scheduled in response to a recent report by the Daily Graphic that the pest had resurfaced in the Nanumba South District and West Mamprusi municipality, destroying hectares of farms.

RMG Ghana Limited, an agro-input company, which organized the …. exercise …. took farmers through the use of drones, recommended time to spray, and how to apply pesticides that could help fight the worms.

…

The drones sprayed a hectare of farmland within 15 minutes, compared to the manual knapsack sprayer which often took about three hours to spray the same area of land.

[J]ust 10 minutes after spraying with the new pesticide…. the worms and other insects that were feasting on the crops died and fell off.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on a foreign news website. This summary has been edited for clarity.

Read full, original article: Drones, new chemicals introduced to fight army worms