The whole harvest of the Ararat valley is under threat – moths are eating the whole harvest of tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes and peppers and villagers don’t even hope that at least 10 percent of the harvest will be gathered, since the Cabinet doesn’t take action to fight moths. Today Varuzhan Khodedanyan, the deputy leader of the community of Darakert, said at the Hayeli club.
In response to a question of www.aravot.am what means there were to fight moths and what the Ministry of Agriculture had to do, Mr. Khodedanyan said that this was the first time in the history of the Armenian agriculture and farmers tried to fight moths as much as they could these days, however they bred so fast that farmers could not be successful, “Therefore, one needs an organized fight. The farmer can destroy moths in his greenhouse, but we cannot fight them in the fields. The ministry has told us to use some drugs or not to leave the harvest in the field, to move it quickly. Even if we do it, there is no use. They lay eggs in the ground.”
During a conversation with is, Mr. Khodedyan said that farmers could buy chemicals from the market and finish moths off using them, but then the harvest would be dangerous for human health, if a farmer unknowingly sold the poisonous harvest on the market. However, even this separate fight will not completely eliminate moths. According to Varuzhan Khodedyan, this kind of harmful moths are frost-proof, they eat stems, harvest and leaves and will spread very quickly also in the foothills and even forests.
As for where the “harvest-eating” moths have come from, no one knows exactly. In the farmer’s words, “Perhaps, they are from the imported seeds, we cannot say exactly. I don’t know whether they check seeds on the border or not. If they had been checked on the border, they would have disinfected them. In any case, it is not clear where they have come from, but for example, inTurkeythere has been such a problem for 10 years already.” The farmer assures that the European experts advised to fight moths using carnivorous parasites, which should be imported toArmenia. They eat harmful insects, but they are very expensive both to import and to look after, “Chemicals shouldn’t be used at all. If nothing is done, we will have nothing to calculate in the fall, the chickens are counted before they are hatched, right? And our chicken are loans, they are dollars of the Agba bank. All farmers have taken loans to be engaged in agriculture, to reap a harvest and to pay off the loans. However, 100% of the harvest is under threat at the moment and the Cabinet doesn’t do anything. We used to harvest 35 tons of harvest from a 3000m² greenhouse, whereas we reaped a 5-6-ton harvest last year because of those moths, we burned the rest. We didn’t know what kind of a problem it was; we thought they were just butterflies, but the moment we would plant a seedling, they would eat it in the very ground.”
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Armen Simonyan, a resident of the same community, complained during a conversation with www.aravot.am that the Ministry of Agriculture didn’t support villages even concerning the simplest issues, “The ministry should at least send agricultural experts to the communities who will give professional advice what should be done when, what should be injected or concerning this very issue of moths, no farmer understood what butterflies attacked the harvest. If an expert was around, perhaps something could be done. If the Cabinet doesn’t do anything within the next 2-3 days, farmers should give up on their harvest.”
Nelly BABAYAN
