Juba — An invasion of fall armyworms may further damage South Sudanese farming, worsening shortages in the war-torn country where half the population is already facing hunger, a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) official has said. The pest, that’s ravaged crops from Ghana to SA since arriving on the continent from the Americas last year, has destroyed corn, sorghum and pasture in South Sudan, according to Felix Dzvurumi, the head of the FAO’s agriculture department in the country. The government and the UN agency are seeking $1m from donors to investigate the effects of the South Sudanese outbreak that started in June, he said. "It has quite a big potential impact on the food security of the country," Dzvurumi said by phone from the capital, Juba. South Sudan, where a civil war that began in December 2013 has claimed tens of thousands of lives, is already suffering from mass hunger as fighting stops civilians tending their crops and inflation surges. An estimated 6-million ...
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