Workshop on role of plant health in promoting food security and maintaining ecological balance
17 September 2020, Saudi Arabia – The Saudi Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA), in partnership with the Regional Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for Near East and North Africa and FAO’s office in Saudi Arabia, on Thursday 17 September 2020 organized a workshop entitled “the key role of plant health (agricultural quarantine) in promoting food security: plant protection protects life and maintains ecological balance”. The workshop was part of activities held by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and FAO to celebrate the International Year of Plant Health (IYPH) 2020.
Dr. Sulaiman Al-Khatib, Director General of Plant Resources at MEWA, welcomed the participants and thanked FAO’s regional and local offices for their role in organizing this workshop. He stressed the need to increase agricultural productivity in the Arab region to ensure food security, as the region increasingly relies on food imports.
FAO representative in Saudi Arabia Dr Abu Bakr Mohamed reviewed FAO’s role in supporting phytosanitary systems in the countries of the region, noting that the standards of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) aim essentially to provide technical guidance for agricultural quarantine systems to reduce the negative economic effects of plant pests and ensure trade flow without the risk of pests.
Dr. Sanad Al-Harbi, Director General of Quarantine at MEWA, and Dr. Suleiman Akdar, Agricultural Quarantine Advisor at the General Directorate of Quarantine, reviewed the basic concepts of agricultural quarantine and its importance for protecting crops from pests, the losses from which may reach 40 percent of agricultural production. They also explained the IPPC’s history, objectives and structure and the legal foundations and regulations governing agricultural quarantine in Saudi Arabia and its important role in protecting plants and agricultural investments in the Kingdom.
Dr. Ayman Al-Ghamdi, Director General of Plant Health at MEWA, discussed the importance of continuous monitoring and control operations and the need to establish effective systems to collect field data on the presence and behavior of pests, saying this is key to combating and eradicating pests. He also stressed the importance of having in place contingency plans and being ready in advance for fighting pests by raising public awareness, training specialists, and establishing networks for coordination and communication among the various parties. He presented some success stories on how MEWA handled invasive pests such as the red palm weevil, tomato leaf miner, and fall armyworm.
Dr. Thaer Yaseen, Plant Protection Officer at the FAO Regional Office, reviewed the most serious pests and diseases that threaten the region, including the Xylella fastidiosa bacteria, which now threatens fruit trees in the Near East and North Africa after it was reported in Italy, Spain, and France, and recently in the two neighboring countries Israel and Iran. A recent study conducted by FAO and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari in Italy showed that the spread of this bacteria would cause losses of up to 2.3 million tons of plant products worth 1.3 billion dollars, which could lead to the loss of 92 million jobs.
Dr Yassee also reviewed FAO’s program to control the red palm weevil in the region, to which Saudi Arabia was a major contributor. He also discussed issues related to research, awareness, and exchange of expertise and useful field data among farmers. He talked about the damage that the Fall Armyworm caused in Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Mauritania, Oman and the UAE, noting that the pest is now threatening all the countries of the region.
Explaining the risks of many other pests and diseases such as fruit flies, citrus greening, Bayoud, and Fusarium wilt of bananas, Dr Yasin stressed the need for a regional strategy to confront these risks and improve the readiness of agricultural quarantine systems to deal with them. Such a strategy, he said, must focus on improving monitoring, control, and early warning systems; supporting laboratories and examination methods; training agricultural quarantine specialists on inspection, control, and sample collection; studying the number of insects that transmit the bacteria and the effect of climate change on vector movement; and enhancing resilience of rural communities.
Dr. Shoki Al-Dobai, Officer of Locusts and other Transboundary Plant Pests and Diseases at FAO head office in Rome, explained that the United Nations General Assembly in 2018 adopted a FAO-IPPC-supported resolution naming 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health. He then showed a promotional video entitled "healthy plants, healthy life", which explains that healthy plants are the basis of human, animal and environmental health. As plants provide food for the world's growing population, the objective of the IYPH is to promote phytosanitary work; spread public awareness of the importance of preserving plant health; mobilize international efforts from governments, the private sector, and farmers to support plant health; and ensure safe trade of plant products by setting international phytosanitary standards by the IPPC.
Dr Dobai noted that the economic effects of pests are not limited to direct damage, but also involve losses due to higher production costs as a result of pest control and management processes. This is in addition to the environmental damage that might be caused by the pests killing many endangered wild plants, particularly in forests. He stressed that prevention is key to avoiding these losses, which must be based on technical and scientific studies such as pest risk analysis. He cited the example of desert locust, which he said might cause famine in the poor countries of the region. He said the fight against the locust upsurge between 2003 and 2005 was an example of the importance of preventive measures, which usually reduce losses by 170 times (from 570 million dollars to 3 million dollars).
Speakers at the workshop discussed many important topics such as the requirements and provisions of the IPPC and the importance of adhering to it to prevent the spread of pests while ensuring trade flow and not exploiting protection measures to impede free trade movement. They also stressed the importance of international and regional partnership to confront transboundary pests, as national efforts alone would not be sufficient to confront pests that can easily move across national borders. Also, they noted the need for national plant protection organizations in each country to work with many national partners, such as the academic and research sector, the regulatory government sector, private companies, and farmers, with a view toward adopting an integrated approach to confront pests. An example from Egypt of how agricultural quarantine systems developed in the region was presented, and the importance of creating electronic tracking and linking systems and issuing electronic phytosanitary certificates was stressed. A full lecture was devoted to plant propagation, with experts stressing the need to pay attention to propagation materials, seeds, and seedlings, as these are classified as high-risk goods for their ability to bring pests and spread them into countries.
A discussion was held by private sector partners and MEWA officials on the most important problems facing import and export companies and ways to overcome them to facilitate trade and ensure the arrival of foods through an effective and efficient system. The importance of using electronic phytosanitary certificates that facilitate trade movement and ensure direct communication between national plant protection organizations in importing and exporting countries was also emphasized. The participants also stressed the importance of data sharing between companies and the agricultural quarantine authorities, especially those concerning plant health requirements, both local and by importing countries.
The workshop concluded with important recommendations, especially with regard to developing effective plans to overcome the negative impact of lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, such as reliance on remote sensing, aerial photos, satellite images, and some modern tools such as smart traps that send data directly to information networks. The recommendations also included the need to establish clear and good management programs that take into account monitoring and control priorities. Some gaps in the agricultural quarantine systems in the countries of the region, such as the lack of scrutiny of plant consignments brought by travelers and the need to modernize plant health systems to conform to new technical developments and recent data on pest movement in the world, were also discussed.