The fall armyworm, which has devastated maize crops across the world, has arrived and established in mainland Australia and parts of New Zealand.
The destructive pest was first detected on islands off the Torres Strait in early February and has recently been detected around 1000 miles south in areas of Queensland. Authorities have painted a grim picture, indicating that the adult moth’s ability to travel up to 100 kilometers a night means that it has never been eradicated, anywhere. In China, where it first arrived in January 2019, it has hit over a million hectares of farmland in the last year, mainly damaging corn and sugarcane crops.