Opposition spokesman on agriculture, Senator Anthony Johnson, has raised concern about the country's pest and disease surveillance and control capabilities, stressing that the agricultural sector was being bombarded by a host of diseases and pests.
Senator Johnson, who was making his contribution to the State of the Nation Debate in Parliament on July 7, lamented that the country did not "have a system of continuous scientific monitoring and analysis of our crops to ensure that if mutation takes place or when a new bug appears, we can respond quickly."
As a result, he said farmers' crops were being devastated by diseases such as the ensign scale, anthracnose, jerry curl, flower midge, black sigatoka, phytopthera, tobacco etch and pests like the weevil borer, snow scale, mealy bug, aphid, sooty mould, diamond back moth, nematode and fungal infection.
It can be controlled
He emphasised that these diseases and pests were not plagues as they could be controlled by proper soil preparation, crop rotation, selection of planting material and application of chemicals.
Senator Johnson suggested that the Government should reintroduce demonstration plots across the island where new varieties of crops could be tried and tested and farmers trained in proper husbandry skills. This, he said, would facilitate the transfer of proper skills and technology to the farmers. "We used to have demonstration plots effectively in the past; lets get them back," he urged.
