FAO, CIMMYT and USAID discuss ways to tackle Fall Armyworm, Desert Locust and other crop-devastating pests and diseases

28 January 2020, Rome - FAO Director-General QU Dongyu met with Martin Kropff, Director-General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The two were also joined by Robert Bertram, Chief Scientist of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). During the meeting they highlighted the urgent need to develop new evidence based solutions and toolkits to tackle the most destructive pests in agriculture, specifically Fall Armyworm (FAW).

In this context, QU referred to the launch of the FAO’s Global Action for FAW Control in December 2019 and the establishment of the Steering Committee as a major step forward in this direction. He expressed his gratitude to Bertram who has accepted to act as both a Steering Committee and a Technical Committee member and Kropff who is a Technical Committee member for their participation in the new platform.

For his part, Kropff reiterated that they are on the right track to keep FAW at bay as the platform can provide targeted relevant solutions to address the problem on the ground.

At the meeting, the three parties and Kip Tom, Ambassador of the Unites States discussed how critical it was that this joint effort had been launched, and agreed on the urgent need to deliver concrete results.

The FAO Director-General stressed the urgency with which new solutions and toolkits need to be developed and then disseminated through this platform. All the participants agreed that it is essential to focus on tangible and traceable localized solutions which are affordable and accessible for farmers.

They also noted that the solutions, which are to be developed for the FAW, could provide road maps useful to address other dangerous outbreaks and epidemics, such as Desert Locust (for the latest update on the situation click here) and the recent Coronavirus outbreak.