Insect infestation ravages North African prickly pears

Amor Nouira, a farmer in the Tunisian village of Chebika, has lost all hope of saving his prickly pears, ravaged by the cochineal insect that is spreading across North Africa.

The 50-year-old watched his half-hectare of cactus crops wither as the invasive insect ravaged about a third of the country’s cacti after an outbreak in 2021.

“At first, I wanted to experiment with the production of prickly pears and gradually develop investments while looking for customers outside the country, especially for its natural oil,” explained Nouira.

“But… since the cacti were damaged, I gave up on the idea of ​​investing and stopped thinking about it altogether.”

Prickly pear is eaten as food and used to make oils, cosmetics and body care products.

In Chebika, as in other rural areas of central Tunisia, many fields of prickly pears – also called Opuntia – have been ravaged by the cochineal, which swept across North Africa ten years ago, starting in Morocco.

The insect, like the prickly pear, is native to the Americas and feeds on the plant’s nutrients and fluids, often killing it.

The infestations have caused significant economic losses for thousands of farmers dependent on the prickly pear, as authorities struggle to combat the outbreak in a country where the fruit is widely consumed as a summer snack.

Livelihoods

Tunisian authorities estimate that around 150,000 families make a living from Opuntia cultivation.

The North African country is the world’s second largest producer of the fruit, after Mexico, with around 600,000 hectares of crops and a yield of around 550,000 tonnes per year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Only production intended for export, about a third of the total harvest, remained in good condition, said Rabeh Hajlaoui, head of the plant health department at the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture.

“We are doing everything we can to save these plants, which are an important source of income for some residents,” he explains, as a litre of extracted Opuntia oil can sell for up to $4,200.

Farmers also plant prickly pears for their resistance to drought and desertification, and sometimes use them to mark out and fence their properties in Tunisia and neighboring Libya.

In Morocco, where the first cases of cochineal were detected in 2014, Opuntia is cultivated on a total of 160,000 hectares.

In 2016, the Moroccan government released an “emergency plan” to combat the cochineal infestation by experimenting with various chemicals, burying infected cacti, and conducting research into developing variants resistant to the insect.

Despite this plan, by August 2022, about 75% of Opuntia crops in Morocco had been infested, according to Mohamed Sbaghi, a professor at the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Rabat (INRA) and coordinator of the emergency plan.

In neighboring Algeria, authorities recorded an outbreak in 2021 in Tlemcen, a city near the border with Morocco.

The prickly pear crop covers around 60,000 hectares in the country, and the fruit is so appreciated that a festival dedicated to it is organized every year in the eastern Kabylie region.

‘Public safety’

Neither the plant nor the cochineal are native to North Africa, but the region’s dry climate has helped them spread, explained Tunisian entomologist Brahim Chermiti.

“Climate change, with increasing droughts and high temperatures, is facilitating their reproduction,” he explained to AFP.

The region has experienced severe drought in recent years, with reduced rainfall and intense heat.

Chermiti believes that combating the cochineal infestation is a matter of “public safety,” which requires “strict monitoring of border crossings and public awareness.”

The researcher fears a total contagion, because “sooner or later it will spread, with the help of many factors such as wind and livestock.”

Hajlaoui, of the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture, said the problem could even cause social unrest if it spread to farms in marginalized areas, such as Tunisia’s Kasserine governorate, where Opuntia is almost the only source of income for many.

He said the “slowness of administrative procedures” during the first major epidemics in Tunisia hampered efforts to stem the spread of the cochineal.

Morocco and Tunisia initially burned and uprooted infected crops, but authorities are now targeting “natural resistance” to the insect, Hajlaoui said.

Last summer, Morocco’s INRA said it had identified eight mealybug-resistant Opuntia varieties that could potentially be cultivated.

The other solution, adds the expert, is to propagate the ladybug Hyperaspis trifurcata, also native to the Americas, among cacti, which feeds on cochineal.

In Morocco, farmers have started breeding ladybugs “so that they are always ready” in the event of an epidemic, explains Aissa Derhem, head of the environmental association Dar Si Hmad.

Last month, Tunisia received 100 ladybugs and an emergency budget of $500,000 to fight the cochineal, allocated by the FAO.

© 2024 AFP