Apr 142014
 

Cavendish bananas from Mindanao. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

ROME—The United Nations warned on Monday of the potential “massive destruction” of the world’s $5.0-billion (3.6-billion euro) a year banana crop as a plant disease spreads from Asia to Africa and the Middle East.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the TR4 strain of Panama disease, which has already hit tens of thousands of hectares in Southeast Asia, had been reported in Jordan and Mozambique.

The disease is “posing a serious threat to production and export” of bananas, the fourth-most important food crop for the world’s least developed countries and a key revenue source for poor farmers, FAO said in a report.

There is no cure for TR4, which particularly affects the Cavendish variety that accounts for 47 percent of world banana production—by far the biggest.

The disease affects the trees but not the bananas themselves and the only solution is to cut down the trees, dig trenches between trees to prevent its spread and impose strict quarantine measures.

Top producers in Latin America, including the world’s main producer Ecuador, have so far not been affected but FAO warned there was a “potential” risk.

“I think it’s sheer luck. It’s not a question of whether it will arrive but when. There’s no prevention,” said Gert Kema, director of the banana research programme at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who manages the site panamadisease.org.

Kema said the availability of bananas in Europe and the United States had not been affected by the disease because their main suppliers were in Latin America and the economic impact has been focused mainly in Asia.

But he said the key problem was a “reluctance” in the industry to realiz the scale of the problem and its excessive reliance on the Cavendish variety.

“The sooner we have replacements for Cavendish that are resistant to Panama the better but this is going to take years,” he said, warning there was a risk of repeating mistakes made during a 1950s epidemic.

Panamadisease.org estimates the global banana crop is worth around $5.0 billion and over 100 million tons of bananas are traded every year, with the biggest market being the United States.

Fazil Dusunceli, a plant pathologist at FAO, was quoted as saying: “Countries need to act now if we are to avoid the worst-case scenario, which is massive destruction of much of the world’s banana crop.”

Gianluca Gondolini, secretary of the World Banana Forum also based at FAO, said it could hurt “employment and government revenues in many tropical countries.”

In particular it would impact “regional markets” in Asia “because TR4 is heavily widespread there and this has consequences on supply and price.”

The disease is soil-borne and the fungus can remain viable for decades and prevention includes foot baths and measures to avoid movement of infected soil and planting materials into and out of farms.

Gondolini said there were “preventive and quarantine measures in place but that should be strengthened.”—Dario Thuburn

Nov 292013
 
FAO: PHL crop damaged by Yolanda worth $110M

Residents of Tacloban City flock to a public market to buy food items as small entrepreneurs begin setting up shop selling fish, bananas, vegetables and other food stuff. (MNS photo) MILAN (Mabuhay) – The typhoon that hit the Philippines has caused crop losses worth $110 million and inflicted damage to the agriculture sector of more than twice that figure, preliminary estimates from the United Nation’s food agency showed on Tuesday (Wednesday, PHL time). Some 153,495 hectares (has.) of rice paddy, maize and other high value crops such as coconut, banana, cassava, mango and vegetables have been hit by Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), which killed at least 3,900 people when it struck on November 8. “High winds, heavy rains and localized floods destroyed houses and infrastructure, including irrigation facilities, and resulted in losses of the main staple rice paddy, sugarcane and coconut crops, as well as livestock, poultry and fisheries,” the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a statement. The forecast for damaged areas included some 77,476 has. of rice crops and 20,951 ha of maize crops, it added. The FAO also said that imports of rice are expected to increase by 20 percent next year to 1.2 million tons. Earlier on Tuesday the Philippines’ National Food Authority (NFA) said it will import up to 500,000 tons of rice from its neighboring countries, possibly before the end of the year, as it replenishes stocks that have been depleted by the ongoing typhoon relief efforts. Because of Yolanda and another typhoon which Read More …

Nov 212013
 
Rice import for 2014 will not reach 1.2 MMT: official

MANILA, Philippines (Xinhua) – Despite the extensive damage caused by typhoon Haiyan, locally named “Yolanda,” to rice-growing areas in central Philippines, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said today that the country’s rice imports for 2014 would not reach 1.2 million metric tons (MMT). Agriculture Undersecretary Dante Delima said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) estimate is “too much.” “The 1.2 MMT of rice which FAO has projected the Philippines will import next year is beyond what the country needs,” Delima said in a text message to Xinhua News Agency. However, he declined to provide the exact volume of rice that the country will import next year. The DA official issued the statement after FAO said in a report that Philippine rice imports would increase by 20 percent to 1.2 MMT in 2014 after 32 percent of rice crops were affected by typhoon Haiyan. FAO said this will cause Philippine rice output to drop to 18 MMT from its earlier projection of 18.9 MMT. Business ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 The Philippine government imports rice to beef up the buffer stock of state food agency National Food Authority which provides the staple to areas affected by natural calamities. For 2013, Manila imported 205,700 metric tons from Vietnam under a government-to-government transaction. Based on the latest data from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), the typhoon destroyed P10.51 billion ($241.5 million) worth of crops and farm infrastructure in central Philippines.