STAFF WRITER
IN THE time it takes to read this sentence, another tonne of maize, wheat or beans will have been devoured by an enemy that never sleeps.
Pests and diseases destroy up to 40% of global food crops each year, a loss the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) now puts at over $220bn annually.
That is more than the entire GDP of Portugal.
On May 12th, as it marked the International Day of Plant Health which is organized by International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), the FAO issued an uncharacteristically blunt warning: unless countries treat plant biosecurity as a foundation of national security, the world’s plates will grow emptier and its trade more brittle.
The theme of this year’s event—“Plant Biosecurity for Food Security and Nutrition”—was not chosen for poetry.
The FAO defines biosecurity as a strategic approach to managing risks to human, animal and plant life.
In plainer language, it means stopping trouble at the border before it becomes a plague at home.
The convention that sets global phytosanitary standards, the IPPC, has 185 signatory countries, yet the gap between paper and practice remains a chasm.
Qu Dongyu, the FAO’s director-general, told delegates via video that “investing in plant biosecurity is a practical choice” and urged leaders to place plant health at the heart of national development strategies.
Several ambassadors sought to show they are already doing so.
The United States’ Lynda Blanchard championed science and innovation, while Mexico’s Laura Elena Carrillo Cubillas called plant health “essential to ensuring nutritious, resilient, and accessible food systems”. Brazil’s deputy representative, Tatiana Gomes Bustamante, echoed the refrain of shared responsibility, a phrase that popped up in almost every speech. The political choreography was polished.
Yet behind it lurked a sobering fact: the insects, fungi and bacteria do not negotiate.
The FAO dressed its message in showmanship.
Over three days, visitors to its Rome headquarters will be confronted by a mock airport security screening designed to shame travellers who smuggle fruit and seeds. Italy’s Ente Nazionale Cinofilia Italiana has supplied sniffer dogs—the unglamorous but effective frontline of pest detection.
One exhibition explains the cryptic ISPM 15 stamp on wooden pallets, a mark that signals compliance with international standards and without which a shipment can be turned away at port.
For a trading nation, ignorance of such secrets is costly.
For Zimbabwe, where agriculture contributes roughly 15% of GDP and anchors the livelihoods of millions, the calculus is especially sharp.
The country knows the sting of transboundary pests: fall armyworm arrived in 2016 and now forces maize farmers to spend scarce dollars on pesticides.
Horticulture, once a vibrant export sector, has been repeatedly hammered by interceptions linked to false codling moth and other quarantine pests in the European Union.
The FAO’s call to strengthen phytosanitary systems—meaning better inspectors, laboratories, and surveillance—is not distant technocratic advice. It is the difference between a consignment of avocados clearing customs in Rotterdam and being incinerated.
The FAO is pushing a “whole-of-society” approach: governments must draft clear regulations, transporters must stop unwittingly ferrying pests, and tourists must learn not to pack a mango in their suitcase.
As Enrico Perotti, the IPPC secretary, noted, up to 40% of crop losses each year hit farmers, families and ecosystems. “Protecting plant health is a shared responsibility,” he said, before adding that the time has come to turn knowledge into action.
Sniffer dogs and stamped pallets are the uncelebrated detail.
The bottom line, though, is elegantly simple: a hungry world cannot afford to ignore the quiet war being waged against its plants.
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