Lives destroyed as armyworms invade Philippine ‘onion capital.’ Unsustainable farming practices leave rural communities unable to adapt, prompting calls to shift to smarter and greener farming.
PHILSTAR
As Ms. Gallardo’s family watched the amount they owed climb to about P600,000, her husband took his own life in January 2021. In places like the Philippines, now unsustainable farming practices leave rural communities unable to adapt, prompting calls to shift to smarter and greener farming. He pointed to the desert locust invasion of 2020, when vast swarms — some the size of cities — swept across Southwest Asia and the Horn of Africa, feasting their way through hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops and grazing land.
The latest government figures show last year’s onion armyworm infestation damaged about 212 hectares of the crop, nearly 40% of the total national onion-growing area.