For weeks we've been reporting on the wild fusarium fungus that's affecting cane fields in the north. The latest alarming estimate is that it has affected 40thousand acres of cane in the north. On Friday the agriculture minister lamented that there is no single solution to this costly problem:
Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture
"There is no magic bullet for fusarium. If we are to start spraying fungicide for fusarium there will not be enough fungicides in the country because 40,000 acres is a lot, right and secondly, it will be a very expensive and environmentally unfriendly practice to use fungicide."
"So it is not a single bullet, it is not a single cure, it has to be an integrated approach. We have to use probably biologically control, the different organisms. We have to look at resistant varieties, we have to look at different cultural practices, we have to look at water drainage and irrigation because right now with the amount of water on the fields, the fungus is spreading faster, right."
"We have to look at technology. If we go in and spray with the pumps, we are spreading disease. It sticks on our clothing and we spread it to other fields. So it has to be looking at probably aerial spraying with drones and so it's a whole integrated system. There's no one knows the level of losses yet to have."
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