Video summary
The Fall Armyworm project represents a collaborative effort involving C4, SARI, and the Department of Agricultural Research in Malawi, primarily funded by a NORAD grant with additional support from FAO's Global Action program. The initiative aims to transform how farmers manage this invasive cereal pest that entered Africa in 2016 after spreading rapidly across Asia within two years. While initial fears predicted massive crop losses due to the pest's generalist feeding habits, the project highlights the significant potential for control through natural enemies and agroecological interventions. Specifically, the core strategy focuses on testing practices such as intercropping and soil amendments in diverse landscapes spanning three districts per country, ranging from wet northern regions to dry southern areas like Kazungura, to ensure findings are applicable across various biophysical conditions.
To rigorously assess the impact of these agricultural changes, the project employs a robust household assessment methodology involving 180 farms participating directly in on-farm trials alongside an additional 720 randomly selected control farms from the same villages. This comparative approach allows researchers to track how management practices evolve over time and understand their real-world effects beyond just experimental plots. Beyond direct farming interventions, the project has invested heavily in outreach through trainer-of-trainer workshops, field days with local agricultural offices, and a shift toward Farmer Field Schools for this season since trials are paused. Furthermore, significant policy work is underway to develop Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies for SADAC countries, aiming to move nations away from relying on toxic and often ineffective free pesticide distributions that are politically expedient but environmentally harmful.
Communication and sustainability form another critical pillar of the project's output, which includes producing animated videos, podcasts, documentary films, and technical manuals designed to integrate pest management chapters into existing national guides used by extension agents and NGOs. The team has also fostered scientific collaboration through two online conferences attended by over 650 participants who presented more than 60 papers, alongside regional workshops for plant protection committees that helped draft IPM strategies. Despite these successes in building capacity and generating knowledge, the project faces challenges such as political interference where governments continue to distribute free pesticides despite technocrats advocating for sustainable alternatives. Additionally, a previous attempt at a decentralized global trial yielded low participation rates until FAO stepped in with funding to establish an eight-country implementation phase involving 24 sites that compares agroecological practices against various pesticide treatments on research stations rather than farms.
Looking toward the future, as current NORAD funding concludes this June without renewal for further rounds, the project is pivoting to finalize IPM recommendations and communication materials while transitioning into a new FAO-led global trial phase expected to run over the next 12 to 18 months in eight countries. The team also plans to leverage extension funding from a UK-funded project ending soon to explore how landscape features like forest management policies influence pest control services, thereby broadening the scope beyond maize and fall armyworm alone. Ultimately, the vision is to expand the conversation toward holistic agroecological system thinking that includes other vital ecosystem services such as pollination, ensuring that future agricultural strategies address a wider range of environmental challenges rather than focusing narrowly on single pests or crops.
Read the full video transcript
good afternoon everybody so
um my
yeah my presentation this morning was
covering essentially the results of our
projects
um so that with this shorter
presentation what I was uh
is this the right one
yeah
uh
I can't see we can open it on the full
screen yeah
there's this
full screen
um whereas yeah I wanted to take and
embrace sort of more about what the
project is doing overall about trying to
to change
um the way farmers are managing full
armyworm
so
um we have sort of several projects are
covered if you like by the full Army one
program because it's although the the
sort of core funding was provided by
this NORAD Grant we've now also got the
uh the global trial
um and um
the uh the work that I've been involved
with with the full Army one Global
action that's run by FAO
um and then also looking forward to
where we want to take this work uh in
the future
so uh we've already covered this it's a
pest of cereals native to the Americas
that it invaded the old world uh 2016.
um quickly spread across the old world
within two years it was in Asia and we
had these initial predictions of very uh
large crop losses but as a generalist
feeder it's
um it's also attacked by a very large
number of natural enemies so the the
potential for control by uh National
enemies is high
so uh the NORAD full album project is
this collaboration between C4 aircraft
the salmon agricultural Research
Institute
um and the department of agricultural
research Malawi and the aim is to
conduct on-farm Trials of these
different agricological interventions so
it's very specifically just certain
agroecological
um practices in specifically
intercropping and
um
soil amendment treatments
um and then to associate
um these uh these trials with household
impact assessments uh and then there's a
whole range of policy and Communications
activities associated with the project
as well so these are the Landscapes we
covered this this morning uh we have 12
Landscapes across three districts per
country
um the districts were selected to cover
the whole range of red rain-fed
conditions for growing Maize so that we
go from the very wet in the north there
and go when we're down to the very dry
in kazungura in the south
the impact assessment uh we had a
baseline assessment of households and
then post-harvest Assessments in in four
years
um so we did the same 180 Farm
households as the on-farm trial so we
were that those across those 12
Landscapes we're actually doing
trials on 180 Farms so we we surveyed
those farms and an additional 720 Farms
that were randomly so another four
Farmers for every farmer that we're
doing the trial with we selected an
extra four Farmers from the same Village
uh randomly from the village household
list
um so that we get both the the group
that we're working with and the group
that we're not working with to try and
understand how they are
uh how they understand impact and how
it's changing Through Time
um
in terms of Outreach we've run quite a
number of uh trainer of trainer
workshops these tend to focus on more
broadly on integrated Pest Management
rather than just on agroecology
I mean agricology practices
um and we've also been doing a lot of
field days with farmers and also local
things like agricultural offices and so
forth and we're currently running a very
large number of farmer field schools
through this season we're not doing the
trials in this season so we've replaced
we've kind of replaced the effort in
Trials into the an effort in farmer
field schools
um we've had several policy briefs and
white papers out mostly focusing on the
sadak region
and with the sadak countries this is
really an FAO initiative but that we've
been using this project to contribute to
uh we've been working on uh the national
IPM strategies for the Saturday
countries the idea being that
if because the tendency at the moment as
I sort of mentioned this morning is that
the countries just sponsor Farmers to
use uh pesticides and often pesticides
that are really not only very toxic but
often not actually that that effective
and so the whole point of getting it in
as a strategy in the country is that
hopefully they will then follow that
strategy and
um at least the technocrats within the
country will have something to sort of
fall back into
push back a little bit perhaps at their
um political Masters
um we also produce uh or are in the
process of producing communication
materials so we have a couple of
animated videos that we're doing
um we're doing some podcasts and Pharma
radio
um also a couple of documentary videos
and Technical manuals so where with the
technical manuals what we've found is a
lot of there's both the national uh
manuals for their own extension agents
and
um also what we've found is a lot of the
um
ngos that work with Farmers have a
manual on sort of how to manage your
farm or something like that so what
we're trying to do is put a chapter in
in many of these different manuals so
that we can try and get out to people
more about
how to to manage full army worm
um and particularly focusing again on
IPM rather than strictly agricological
practices and then in terms of
sustainability we've also trained some
uh students there
including one who was sponsored by the
TPP came from
uh have been in and came down and
studied in Zambia
um we've also tried to communicate to
large numbers of of other scientists
working on the topic so we held two
online
conferences one this uh earlier sorry at
the in October last year and won the
year before that this was actually sort
of because of
uh
covid we had planned us much much
smaller in-person workshops with with
policy makers but
um with covid we had to change our
strategy and we actually found it to be
much more effective we had uh
um these two online conferences they
were attended by more than 650
participants
with something in excess of 60 papers uh
presented over the two days and in both
years we ran a sadak regional Workshop
for the plant protection committees
um which was a process to developing the
IPM strategies
um however I have to as I mentioned this
morning with Zambia just suddenly
deciding it's going to give out free
pesticides we there's this persistent
problem even where you've got the
technocats within the country really
supporting the IPM approach
you still get this persistent problem of
political interference because giving
out something for free to Farmers is
politically expedient and I'm not quite
sure exactly how we can really tackle
that I mean developing the strategies is
a way of creating some mechanism for
pushback but I don't think it's the
complete answer
um so move on to the global trial
um this had a version one and a version
two to it so under the version one it
was just a group of people particularly
myself and a couple of colleagues at
Summit uh decided that trying to do a
trial of agric these limited
agro-ecological practices
cross a wide variety of socio-economic
and uh I grew you know a biophysical
environments was a was really important
because the outcomes are context
dependent
um so we set up a platform to take the
data on the trial and we then sort of
put the word out to people could they
join in
um but the truth was that although we
put a lot of effort into setting up the
their platform and everything we got
very very low upticks so we did get a
couple of groups in a couple of places
coming forward and saying that they
would do it
but it was more a case of sort of
everybody thought it was a great idea
but then people tended not to follow
through
um so we were a bit stuck there but then
we moved
fortunately through FAO who were one of
the groups that were trying to help us
they saw this opportunity because they
actually got funding to sponsor
countries to do trials so they then said
well let's make the global trial part of
this Global action and so that's just
starting uh we have eight countries
three sites per country so with this
goes okay ahead and it's full
implementation we'll have 24 sites where
we implement this trial it is also
because we had to negotiate a little bit
with the protocols a broader trial it's
looking at the agroecological ones but
it's also tying up with comparing you
know depending on the
um what this the individual countries
wanted to do some pesticide treatments
some bio pesticide treatments and so on
the only thing that I would say is a
disadvantage is that they it has moved
from being a on-farm trial which was the
original version one to a on station
trial because I think all the the
national uh implementers they don't want
to be doing it on Farm they want to be
doing on station which is a bit of a
shame but at least we will still be
testing this across a wide variety of
at least
um biophysical
um contexts
we've had a number of Publications out
and we're uh this this year we're trying
to write up uh the results of of the the
um
um the main trials that we've been doing
so that we should have a a bunch more
come out this year
um going on to Future ideas
unfortunately the funding stream that
we're getting from NORAD
um is not being renewed and so we don't
have an option to go back to NORAD and
persuade them to give us another round
um and it finishes in June
um So within this project we're just
trying to develop the IPM
recommendations and the communications
material and then that project will wrap
up
we have the uh the project the the short
the small project with FAO to implement
this Global trial which
um we're now at the point of just um
uh you know getting natural work
implemented through these eight
countries
um so that's that'll start and that'll
run probably over about the next 12 to
18 months
just coming up we have a workshop with a
project that was funded in the UK
their project is also coming to an end
but they have an opportunity for
extension funding and we want to link
landscape features to pest control
services so I think that this will be a
an interesting opportunity to look
particularly at broader things like
um
uh you know the amount of forest you've
got in Forest management policies and so
forth in how you control pests
um and then I think uh you know we've
got an opportunity to discuss ideas
tomorrow I think really when we're
looking at uh uh looking to the future
in this kind of project we need to
broaden from looking just at full army
worm and just at Maize to a much more
broader
um
idea of how agroecology and a lot of
people have also been obviously talking
about the other aspects of the
agroecology the the system thinking
agroecology and and so forth and I think
thinking well where does pest control
and so forth fit into that and I we
haven't had any presentations on
pollination which of course is a major
important ecosystem service that uh you
know agroecology is often promoted as a
solution to
um Anna so I think that these are the
things that we can talk about
thank you