Drought, armyworms cut Malawi maize crop by 19%.

Malawi’s maize output declined by 19.4 percent in the 2017/18 farming year to 2.8 million tons due to damage caused by drought and crop-eating armyworms. This decline is because of dry spells experienced in some parts of the country and the armyworm invasion. Malawi produced 3.5 million tons of maize in the 2016/17 season. Maize is Malawi’s staple crop. Armyworms are a pest from Latin America that first threatened African crops late in 2016.