Special allocations will be made in 2018 to tackle army worms - Deputy Minister

A Deputy Agriculture Minister, George Oduro, has reiterated the ministry’s commitment to fighting the fall army worms that invaded some farmlands in the country.

According to him, it is the ministry’s desire to ensure that such havoc does not recur indicating that the outfit intends to allocate resources to adequately prepare itself for the next planting season.

"Last year when it came we were not serious about it as a country but we cant blame anybody because it was new in the system, now this year, minister was able to source for GHC16 million which we used to get these chemicals to fight it” he said.

"The year is about to end and we are all doing our budget. If last year our budget was, GHC10 million without army worm funding now we are aware of, we definitely will add or increase our budget to make us fully equipped” he stressed.

“Definitely we are going to ask for money to increase our budget to combat the army worm, definitely next year they will react next planting season because they are here and they are here to say and we should be ready” Hon. Oduro added.

He clarified that contrary to impression created that large hectors of farm lands were destroyed by the fall army worms, the damage was not as dire due to the timely intervention of the ministry.

“The affected area in terms of acreage was 115,000 hectares in terms of where they attacked but the destroyed farms was about 15,000 hectares. When they attacked 115,000 hectares it was controlled by the application of the chemicals and only 15,000 hectares were destroyed” he emphasised.