Food security threatened by disease

By LEMACH LAVARI
AFRICAN swine fever (ASF) is spreading rapidly in the Highlands region, according to the National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority’s (Naqia) managing director Joel Alu.
ASF has now been recorded in the Tambul-Nebilyer District of Western Highlands.
Early this year after initial investigations by Naqia in the Southern Highlands, Hela and Enga confirmed the presence of the ASF, the Minister for Agriculture and Livestock John Simon declared these provinces as disease areas.
“The reports I am getting show that the disease is spreading really fast. Initially the disease was only in Mendi and some parts of Nipa but it has spread to the eastern part of Southern Highlands in Ialibu-Pangia District, Kagua-Erave and into Western Highlands in Tambul, into Enga in Kandep, and into Hela in Komo-Magarima. It is moving very fast,” Alu said.
With confirmed cases in Western Highlands the Agriculture and Live Stock minister may have to include the province as a disease area too.
“Hela, Southern Highlands and Enga are declared disease provinces but the ASF has spread into Western Highlands too and the minister might later amend the gazette and include Western Highlands when he gets a full report,” Alu said.
National response taskforce
On June 19 Naqia announced a national response task force team to coordinate awareness on the ASF after about three months of awareness in the Highlands region. The team comprises of Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO), National Agriculture Research Institute (Nari), University of Goroka and the Pacific Horticultural and Agricultural Market Access Program (Phama Plus). Naqia’s chief veterinary officer (CVO) Dr Ilagi Puana was appointed the taskforce’s controller.
Naqia reportedly stated that about 700 pigs had died between November 2019 and February 2020. Since then and with the disease being detected now in the Western Highlands Naqia has not been able to provide a correct estimate of the number of dead pigs.
Puana said 2000 to 3000 pigs may have died since the outbreak late last year. What is concerning is that there is a misguided belief from smallholder farmers that Naqia would compensate them for the loss of their pigs and therefore there has been some questionable reports of pig deaths.
“In one area it was reported that 2,600 pigs had died but that is very hard to verify. There is a false idea that Naqia will compensate them for the loss of their pigs. We don’t have money to do that,” Puana said.
He said such reports were brought to the attention of Naqia field staff but they would need to be verified before any consideration.
Moreover, “in a worst case scenario the ideal way of doing disease control and eradication would be mass culling. However it is bit difficult to do that with pigs especially in the highlands, we may be faced with demands for compensation and we don’t have the funds for that. We are not considering that because it will be very expensive and also it is not practical.”
Funding constraints
On May 19 Alu said in a press conference that the authority made a budget submission to the National Executive Council (NEC) of K18 million to combat the spread of the ASF in the three disease declared provinces of Hela, Enga and Southern Highlands.
NEC had approved the release of K2.3 million in April but at the time of the press conference no funds had been received by the authority. It is not clear whether Naqia has received any funding as yet.
“We did a budget submission for K18 million to the NEC and it has been approved. K2.3 million was supposed to be released into our accounts in August but we have yet to receive it. The remainder of our budget has been earmarked for the 2021 budget according to our NEC approval,” Alu said.
He said without the release of the approved funding the authority was forced to use about K2 million from its operational budget toward ASF. He said assistance from donor agencies has been providing relief to Naqia’s efforts thus far.
The Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment have pledged funding support to help Naqia.
“We have signed a contract for funding of Aus$200,000 (K500, 000) for preventions measures to stop the spread of ASF,” Alu said.
In addition, “we were able to get assistance from a very important partner, Phama; they’ve been helping us with logistics, and we at Naqia thank them. Also assistance from FAO and other organisations.”
“If we don’t manage our biosecurity we will have issues in food security, that is the important message that our people and our political leaders must understand because it affects human lives, it affects our survival,” Alu said.
Moreover, Alu urged provincial governments of the disease declared areas to contribute substantially towards Naqia’s efforts. He raised concern of the misunderstanding of Naqia’s role by some groups and individuals in the affected provinces who are seeking funding from Naqia for containment and awareness work.
On the other hand, Alu said the economic down turn and decrease in trading has also affected Naqia’s revenue generation. Alu did not make clear how much the authority was losing but indicated that the restrictions imposed on global trade as prevention measures against the spread of the Covid-19 have affected Naqia’s income flow.
“Naqia makes its money through trade facilitation; if there is trade going on we make money through our fees and charges on our permits,” Alu said.
Awareness the weapon against ASF
Stopping the movement of wild animals and pigs that my transport the ASF in the wild is impossible says Puana.
“The movement will still happen so the strategy is awareness.”
Naqia is testing awareness materials with farmers in impacted areas in the highlands, especially women, because in the highlands women are predominantly responsible for pig husbandry. There is also work being done to translate awareness materials to local languages.
“Apart from containment in the form of checkpoints, awareness is the weapon,” Puana said.
“Our next phase is to try to improve the husbandry practices of small holder farmers. We are not concerned about large commercial famers because they will have good biosecurity for their farms.”
How did ASF enter PNG?
Naqia began surveillance at all ports of entries into PNG since the outbreak of ASF in China in 2019. However, despite these efforts the ASF was detected in Mendi, Southern Highlands.
“We don’t know how it came but we got suspicious about certain movements of goods and we will investigate and address this,” said Alu.
“Like all other diseases we do monitoring and surveillance but like coffee berry borer, we were thinking that it was going to come in through Indonesia but it popped up in Jiwaka and Western Highlands because of illegal movement of things.
“We have people who continue to conceal and illegally move goods despite Naqia’s efforts at our borders”
Fall armyworm
According to FAO of the United States, the fall armyworm (FAW) has decimated crops across the world. In its caterpillar stage it feeds in large numbers, on more than 350 types of plants, grasses and other crops, including rice, wheat, cotton, sugar cane, sorghum, and many fruit and vegetables.
The FAW can cause significant damage to plants unless there is natural control, good agronomic practices or resistant varieties in place. Once established in a country, FAW is not possible to eradicate or control to stop it from spreading. The adult moth can fly 100km per night, and is capable of migrating long distances. FAW is also very prolific; the female moth can lay up to 1,000 eggs in her lifetime.
It has been reportedly detected in Australia for the first time on Saibai Island on the Feb 12, about 52.6km from the South Fly District of PNG. Australian Agriculture Minister Mark Furner was reported on ABC News saying the armyworms had caused “very alarming” damage to crops in other regions and posed a serious biosecurity threat in Australia.
Naqia’s chief plant protection officer Pere Koko said upon notification by Australian Quarantine counterparts, detection teams were sent to the border provinces of West Sepik and Western.
“We only detected it in Western in early March. We found the pest only on corn in Mari, a treaty village in the South Fly District. We also found it in sorghum gardens on Daru Island,” Koko said.
“We sent the samples to Australia and we have genetically identified the pest to its species level and we’ve found that it’s basically same as the species that has been travelling from Africa to Asia and into Australia.
“Because of the Covid-19 restrictions we have not been doing much apart from the initial detection survey. What we plan to do is the delimiting survey in the high risk provinces in the Southern region, this includes Western, Gulf, Milne Bay, Oro and some other provinces in the Momase region too.”
A delimiting survey can be used to identify the original source of a pest. Koko said once the survey was done Naqia would be sure of the extent of the spread of FAW and advice local farmers accordingly.
Cost thus far
Koko said the initial detection survey for the FAW in the Western and West Sepik has cost Naqia about K90,000. He added that for the following delimiting survey, it would cost about K500,000. However, Koko said Naqia needed funding assistance for the delimiting survey.
According to Naqia’s general manager Technical and Advisory Division David Boas Tenakanai Phama Plus has indicated they would support with funding for awareness work on FAW. Phama Plus is an Australian Government initiative aimed at improving economic growth and rural livelihoods for Pacific peoples.
“They (Phama Plus) have also supported in regard to the ASF. We have a budget and they will look at a component in the budget to support,” Tenakanai said.
FAW threat to food security
Tenakanai advised that farmers were not to import pesticides without consultation with Naqia and the Conservation and Environmental Protection Authority (Cepa) because the FAW easily developed resistance if pesticides were not used in accordance with proper guidelines.
“We are assuming that FAW is already widespread in PNG because the adult moth can move hundreds of kilometres in one night and once assisted by winds it can go further.

• Lemach Lavari is a content researcher with the Media for Development Initiative (MDI) .