Inside Tanzania's strategy to control quelea birds and migratory pests

Dar es Salaam. The government has disbursed Sh3 billion for the procurement of aircraft for spraying destructive and migratory pests that have been affecting crop farms in Tanzania.

It is among several strategies the government will apply to control the pests.
The money will be used to procure 21 large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones and facilitate the training and accreditation of 20 pilots.
Others are the strengthening of the seven zones through the provision of transport facilities, strengthening collaboration with regional locust control organisations and Local Government Authorities (LGAs), and increasing access to pesticides.

The Tanzania Plant Health and Pesticides Authority (TPHPA) acting director general, Prof Joseph Ndunguru, revealed the strategies during an interview with The Citizen on the recent killing of over five million weaver birds in Manyara Region.

The operation to clear the quelea species that have been invading paddy farms at Magugu in Babati District has been under TPHPA supervision.

Prof Ndunguru said the government has disbursed Sh3 billion for the procurement of an aircraft that would be responsible for spraying pesticides to control quelea birds, locusts, and migratory pests.

He said the authority has also procured 21 large drones for carrying out surveys and identifying areas with quelea birds, locusts, army worms, and other migratory pests in order to take control measures before adversely affecting the farms.

“This is a huge achievement because, instead of waiting for problems to occur, the presence of this equipment enables us to plan for sustainable control measures. That means we are shifting from being reactive to proactive,” he said.

He said drones would be distributed to all country zones, namely the West, East, North, Central, Southern Highlands, South, and Lake Zone.

Already, 20 pilots who will be operating the drones in all seven zones have been trained and accredited by the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA).

Prof Ndunguru said TPHPA is planning to equip crop inspectors with transport facilities, including vehicles and motorbikes installed with the Global Positioning System (GPS), in a fresh bid to strengthen zonal offices.

“These pieces of equipment will be handed over during a ceremony slated for October 10, 2023, at TPHPA headquarters in Arusha. These efforts aim at increasing efficiency in data collection, he said.

“Strategies will also involve strengthening monitoring, not only of pests and quelea birds but also of army worms and locusts. The purpose is to increase farmers’ efficiency in crop farming and access better markets for their produce,” he added.

The professor said Tanzania’s ambition to feed the world should go hand in hand with increasing crop yields through early and efficient control of diseases and migratory pests.

According to him, the authority was scaling up cooperation with regional members, including the Desert Locust Control Organisation-East Africa (DLCO-EA) and the Red Locust Emergency Prevention in Eastern Africa (RLEP-EA).

“The aircraft used for controlling the recent outbreak of quelea birds came from Kenya, as it belongs to the RLEP-EA. However, Tanzania has decided to procure its own aircraft.

“However, we are also doing collective surveys. For instance, as we are speaking, a team of experts is in Tabora Region to identify places with signs of locust outbreaks,” he added. According to him, a team of experts includes those from Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and other members of the East Africa Community (EAC).

He said the agency was also increasing cooperation with LGAs, which are crucial to the access of information because they are the ones working with farmers at the grassroots level.

Prof. Ndunguru said that unlike other years, climate change has prolonged the period of the year during which birds like quelea quelea could be seen. He, however, allayed fears that the situation would worsen.

He called on farmers to collaborate with agriculture experts to frequently inspect their farms and report the outbreak of pests, locusts, and army worms.

“Usually, reported incidents are responded to by the provision of pesticides through LGAs. Local authorities have been provided with enough pesticides for quick and immediate intervention,” he said, noting that the government has also provided enough subsidised pesticides.

DLCO-EA director Mwesigwa Rwaheru recently told the 68th regular session of agriculture ministers from the East Africa region in Dar es Salaam that quelea outbreaks have been reported in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda during the period from July 2022 to June 2023.
“The birds were generally feeding on irrigated rice, wheat, pear millet, sorghum, and teff crops. DLCO-EA aircraft were deployed for quelea bird control in Tanzania and Ethiopia. More than 258 million birds were controlled in the region during the period under review,” he said.

During the meeting, Tanzania Minister for Agriculture, Hussein Bashe, said the recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shows that while over $220 million of the global economy is used for fighting against locusts and migratory pests annually, 40 percent of the produced food is lost on the pests’ outbreak.

He called for collaboration, especially through the use of domestic resources, in intensifying the war against diseases, locusts, and migratory pests for the benefit of neighbouring countries.
“This is because whenever the problem occurs in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, etc., the same will spread to other countries in the region,” he stressed.

Hundreds of thousands of quelea birds that recently threatened to destroy over 1,000 acres of paddy farms in Manyara Region were killed during an operation by TPHPA.

TPHPA Pests and Outbreaks Control expert, Mr Gladman Mbukoi, said the destructive birds were capable of destroying over 50 tons of food crops on farms per day and could clear entire farms within a very short period of time.

He said the exercise was difficult because huge swarms of birds had blanketed the entire area, blitzing onto the paddy farms and feeding at alarming speed.

Mr Mbukoi said the experts were forced to deploy aerial spraying of avicides that were dissolved in diesoline.

It took more than four days to spray the birds, with the work taking place mostly during the night when weavers were asleep.
Local farmers, such as Ms Mariam Gadiel, a rice grower at Magugu, admitted that the birds’ invasion had already gone out of control because even the hundreds of watchmen that the farmers had been hiring to drive them away could not keep up with the large swarms of birds.

The Babati District Agriculture Officer, Kanas Sulu, said the birds were negatively impacting the farming sector in Manyara, prompting local authorities to seek help from the TPHPA in Arusha. Farmers have been experiencing 100 percent loss of harvests,” the officer said.

Acting manager of TPHPA in the Northern Zone, Juma Mwinyimkuu, said the birds’ invasions had been so apparent during the start of the dry season, especially in the months of September and October 2023.

“But we are well prepared to combat such invasions with modern technology such as large drones, environmentally friendly chemicals, and manpower,” said Mr Mwinyimkuu.
On his part, the TPHPA Acting Supervisory Manager in charge of pests and outbreak control, Godlove Kirimbo, said they normally cooperate with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in undertaking such exercises.

Quelea birds have been known to cause serious damage to crops in Africa when they migrate.

The weaver birds usually destroy small grains like rice and sorghum. Queleas move in swarms because they also happen to be the most populous bird on earth, with nearly 2.0 billion of them flying in the wild.

They are widely distributed in Tanzania and across Africa, where they roost in large flocks estimated at 30 million birds.