By; BALA B. BITRUS
Many farmers in Nigeria have over the years been at the mercy of the voracious Red-billed Quelea birds, grasshoppers, and the various types of worms which decimates crop fields speedily year in and year out.
Quelea bird is a small sparrow-like bird but very destructive. A single bird can eat 10 grams of grains in a few hours. While worms are small creepy pests whose larvae feed on all types of green leaves and grasses and destroy crops within minutes.
Usually, at the early stages of cereal crops such as maize, rice, cowpea, beans, peanuts, millets, sorghum, and all grasses, these creeping worms appear on farmlands, especially at the early onset of the rains and destroy the plants.
Quelea birds surface mostly during the pre-harvest seasons. These birds, in great numbers, flock on croplands to devour the maturing crops within days.
Plants pests that put farmers’ crop fields and vegetation at great risk include the notoriously ravenous armyworms, the gregaria, the cutworms, locusts, and the Quelea birds, etc which are deleterious pests capable of devouring entire crop fields within weeks.
These pests as perennial invaders which attack farmlands ferociously, are known to be causing great losses to many farmers annually and they impoverished many farmers in Nigeria.
Such plants pests have remained grave threats and nightmares to farmers, crop fields, and the government’s trajectory and policy on agriculture and food production.
But with the coming of the new agriculture spraying drone services by Union Farms of Africa to Nigeria, the search for the fastest remedial solution to the menace of worms, locusts, and the Quelea birds’ invasion of farmlands, the troubles, pains, and quest for a more efficient solution may have come to a good bus stop.
UFA has a large stock of matchless DJI Agras T. Series including the AgrasT30 and the T10 drones, and many others of different calibrations.
Supplies of these specialized unmanned aircraft have spread to over a hundred (100) countries and still counting.
Nigerian farmers can now have a good reason to be happy. UFA has customized drones for an immediate sweeping counter-offensive against plant pests.
The Union Farns of Africa, with its wide range of agricultural services, is now in Nigeria and willing to do business and go into partnership with governments, companies, and individual farmers who are desirous to avail themselves of the services of the organization.
The organization has an array of these unmanned aircraft that have huge comparative advantages over conventional aircraft sometimes deployed by governments to fight pests and especially Quelea birds on farmlands where they invade.
These agri-spray drones can fly for hours and at very low heights (altitudes) and spray affected crop fields with exact precision and accuracy.
Drones are electric-powered remote-controlled, and are technically manageable, maneuverable, and controlled by an unboarded pilot. They are all weatherproof, and easy to operate.
The Union Farms of Africa has branches in seven African countries including Cameroun, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Liberia, Niger, Chad, Nigeria, and it is also in India.
In Nigeria, its temporary office is in Kaduna at No. 20A, Bank Road, behind the Old Singer Building Roundabout, off Ali Akilu Road.
Bala BITRUS is an agricultural enthusiast. He writes
from Minna, Niger State
