Zimbabwe’s farmers and beekeepers clash over invasive bee plant

Source: Zimbabwe’s Farmers and Beekeepers Clash Over Invasive Bee Plant – Modern Farmer In Zimbabwe, farmers and beekeepers are divided over how to handle an invasive plant choking out farmland and livestock pastures. As climate change pushes plant species to new areas, an invasive plant—vernonanthura polyanthes, commonly known as Bee plant—is aggressively invading Zimbabwe’s once pristine Eastern Highlands, clogging fertile croplands and livestock pastures. Farmers want the plant gone; beekeepers are celebrating the honey it produces. Neither side wants to budge. With up to 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s population working in agriculture and more than 50,000 people directly involved in beekeeping, the fight over this tall, dense plant is coming to a head. “This plant is bad news; it’s a menace. It’s taking over fertile farmlands,” says Leonard Madanhire, a maize farmer with a 12-acre piece of land in a small farming community in the country’s Eastern Highlands, a region straddling the ...