By Abdirahman Abdillahi Ibrahim
Agriculture is central to livelihoods and food security across Somaliland. Yet farmers face a persistent and often underestimated threat: insects, plant diseases, invasive weeds, rodents and other organisms that can damage or destroy crops before they reach the market.
The challenge spans crops and production systems. Sorghum, maize and pearl millet can be affected by insect pests and plant diseases.
Vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers, melons and cabbage face a range of insect pests and pathogens. Fruit, legume and fodder crops face their own biological pressures.
For farmers already navigating erratic rainfall, water constraints and difficult growing conditions, losing even part of a harvest can have serious consequences for household income, food availability and local markets.
The question, therefore, is not simply how to control pests. It is how to protect crops effectively without creating new problems for farmers, consumers or the environment.
A changing agricultural environment
Pests and plant diseases do not exist in isolation from their surroundings. Temperature, rainfall, humidity, cropping patterns and farming practices can all influence when pests emerge, how quickly they reproduce and how plant diseases develop.
Changing environmental conditions do not affect every pest in the same way. Some populations may increase, others may decline, while the timing or geographical distribution of particular pests and diseases may change. For farmers, however, the result can be greater uncertainty about when threats will appear and how severe they may become.
This uncertainty is compounded by a fundamental information gap.
Reliable, up-to-date information on the distribution, seasonal occurrence, severity and economic impact of many crop pests and diseases in Somaliland remains limited. Yet Somaliland has demonstrated that targeted surveillance can work: in 2023, the Somaliland Government and the Food and Agriculture Organization opened a Pest Control Centre in Hargeisa to strengthen Desert Locust early warning and control capacity.
The challenge now is to build on that experience and strengthen surveillance beyond a single major pest, creating a broader crop-protection system capable of detecting and responding to threats affecting staple crops, vegetables, fruits and other agricultural production.
That is more than a technical issue. It is a food-security issue.
The pesticide dilemma
When caterpillars begin consuming a cabbage crop or disease spreads through a vegetable field, chemical pesticides can appear to offer the quickest solution.
Pesticides have an important role in agriculture. When the appropriate product is selected, used at the recommended rate and applied according to safety instructions, chemical control can help farmers protect crops and reduce economic losses.
The difficulty begins when pesticides become the first and only response to every pest problem.
Farmers may not always have access to reliable information about the pest they are trying to control, the active ingredient in a product, the appropriate application rate, the protective equipment required or the period that should elapse between spraying and harvest.
These details matter.
Repeated use of the same pesticide or chemical group can select for resistant pest populations, reducing the effectiveness of future treatments. Once resistance develops, farmers can face fewer effective control options and higher production costs. Simply applying more pesticide is not a sustainable answer; resistance management depends on appropriate product selection, correct application and avoiding unnecessary treatments.
Broad-spectrum pesticides can create another problem by affecting organisms that farmers actually need. Predatory insects and parasitoids can naturally suppress crop pests, while bees and other pollinators contribute to the production of many crops. Protecting these beneficial organisms is an important part of integrated crop protection. FAO guidance on IPM specifically emphasizes conserving beneficial species and minimizing unintended effects on non-target organisms.
The result can be a cycle in which chemical control becomes increasingly important precisely because some of the natural mechanisms that once helped regulate pest populations have been weakened.
What happens after spraying?
The consequences of pesticide use do not end when the spray dries.
Fresh vegetables are often harvested and marketed soon after production. If a pesticide is applied incorrectly or too close to harvest, residues may remain on the produce.
This is why pesticide products carry instructions concerning the pre-harvest interval, or PHI—the minimum period that should pass between an application and harvest for a particular crop and use. FAO guidance identifies observing official pre-harvest intervals as an important part of responsible pesticide management.
Observing the appropriate waiting period is therefore an important food-safety measure. But farmers cannot be expected to comply with requirements they have not been clearly taught or cannot easily understand.
Safe pesticide management depends on more than a farmer’s willingness to follow instructions. It requires access to properly labelled products, clear information, appropriate protective equipment and trustworthy technical advice.
It also requires farmers to understand that seeing a pest does not automatically mean that spraying is necessary.
What recent evidence from Burao tells us
Recent research from Burao provides an important glimpse into the realities of vegetable production in Somaliland.
A 2026 study of 100 vegetable farmers and 50 consumers found that tomatoes, onions, cabbage, peppers and leafy vegetables are important crops in the local dryland vegetable system. Farmers reported pest pressure from insects including aphids, caterpillars, whiteflies and beetles, while water scarcity and limited access to reliable agricultural inputs also constrain production.
The study found that 67 percent of surveyed farmers identified agro-veterinary shops as their main source of information about pesticide use, while only 13 percent reported contact with an agricultural extension service during the previous year. Among farmers who used pesticides in the most recent growing season, only 22 percent reported reading and following label instructions.
These findings come from a relatively small exploratory study and should not be treated as representative of all farmers in Somaliland. But they highlight an important structural issue: crop protection is also an information system.
Where access to extension advice is limited, the quality of information available through private agricultural suppliers can have a significant influence on how pesticides are selected and used.
Agro-dealers can be part of the solution
Agrochemical retailers are therefore not simply sellers of agricultural products. In many communities, they are an important point of contact between farmers and crop-protection information.
A safer agricultural supply chain should help ensure that farmers can access properly labelled, legally authorised and appropriately stored products. They should also receive accurate information about dosage, application, protective measures, storage and pre-harvest intervals.
The problem of counterfeit, mislabelled, expired or poorly stored agricultural chemicals deserves particular attention. Such products can undermine crop protection while creating additional risks for farmers, consumers and the environment.
But agro-dealers should not be viewed only as a potential source of risk.
With appropriate training, competency standards and regulatory oversight, they could become part of the solution. An informed agro-dealer can help a farmer distinguish between a pest and a disease, recognize when chemical treatment may not be appropriate, select a suitable product when treatment is justified and explain how it should be used safely.
Improving pesticide management is therefore not simply about telling farmers to use fewer chemicals. It is about creating a supply chain in which better information leads to better decisions.
Integrated Pest Management: choosing the right tool
The alternative to excessive pesticide use is not to leave farmers defenceless.
A more sustainable approach is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)—a strategy that combines prevention, monitoring and different control methods to keep pest populations at manageable levels while minimizing unnecessary risks.
FAO’s IPM framework emphasizes prevention, regular monitoring, non-chemical control methods and careful decisions about when intervention is justified. It includes practices such as crop rotation, field sanitation, appropriate planting times, resistant varieties, trapping, biological control and, where necessary, carefully selected chemical treatments.
IPM begins before a pest outbreak occurs.
Farmers can reduce pest and disease pressure through crop rotation, field sanitation, appropriate planting dates, healthy planting material and crop varieties with suitable levels of pest or disease resistance. Good field management can make crops less vulnerable in the first place.
The next step is monitoring.
Regular field scouting helps farmers identify pests and diseases early, determine their distribution and assess whether damage is increasing. Where suitable, traps and other monitoring tools can provide additional information about pest populations.
This matters because the presence of a pest does not necessarily mean that a crop requires immediate chemical treatment.
Where appropriate, farmers can use mechanical and physical methods, including hand removal, traps, barriers or removal of heavily infected plant material. Biological control can also play an important role by conserving natural enemies or using suitable biological-control products where they are available and proven effective.
Chemical pesticides remain one of the available tools—but they should be used selectively and responsibly when monitoring and diagnosis indicate that treatment is justified.
The principle is simple:
Use the right tool at the right time, rather than automatically reaching for the chemical bottle.
What IPM could look like in practice
Consider a farmer growing cabbage who begins to notice caterpillars feeding on the leaves.
The first response need not be to spray the entire field.
The farmer can inspect several parts of the crop to determine how widespread the infestation is and, where possible, identify the pest. If the problem is localized, removing heavily infested leaves or plants may help reduce the population. Natural enemies should be protected rather than unnecessarily destroyed, and appropriate mechanical or biological measures can be considered where they are available.
If monitoring shows that pest numbers are increasing and the expected crop damage is likely to justify treatment, a suitable control can then be selected.
Where a pesticide is justified, it should be appropriate for the crop and target pest, legally permitted for that use, applied according to its label and used with the necessary protective measures and pre-harvest interval.
This is the essence of IPM: prevent where possible, monitor continuously, diagnose carefully and intervene when necessary.
The exact combination of measures will vary according to the crop, pest, season and local farming conditions.
That last point is particularly important for Somaliland.
Local solutions require local evidence
Agricultural recommendations developed in another country or climate cannot simply be transferred to Somaliland and assumed to work.
The region needs stronger evidence about which pests and diseases are present, where they occur, when they emerge, how much damage they cause and which control measures work under local conditions.
That begins with surveillance.
Somaliland’s experience with Desert Locust monitoring demonstrates the value of early-warning infrastructure. The Pest Control Centre established in Hargeisa provides a foundation for surveillance and response to a major migratory pest.
The opportunity now is to develop a broader crop-protection surveillance system.
Extension workers, researchers and trained farmers could contribute regular field observations. Digital reporting tools could help collect information from different agricultural areas. Where appropriate, georeferenced observations could be combined with weather and environmental data to identify emerging patterns.
Diagnosis is equally important.
Some crop diseases can resemble insect damage, nutrient deficiencies or other stresses. Without accurate diagnosis, farmers may apply an insecticide to a fungal or bacterial disease—or apply chemicals when the underlying problem is unrelated to pests.
Accessible diagnostic services, including laboratory support where necessary, can therefore prevent inappropriate treatment and improve the quality of agricultural advice.
Over time, Somaliland could also develop agro-ecological maps showing where particular pests and diseases occur and how their distribution relates to rainfall, temperature, cropping systems and other environmental factors.
Such information could support early-warning systems, allowing farmers and agricultural authorities to prepare for emerging problems rather than waiting for widespread crop damage.
The missing ingredient is information
The future of crop protection in Somaliland will depend not simply on the availability of agricultural chemicals, but on the quality of information available before those chemicals are used.
Farmers need to know what is attacking their crops. Extension workers need reliable evidence on which to base recommendations. Agro-dealers need sufficient training to provide responsible advice. Researchers need information from the field to identify priority threats and evaluate control measures. Authorities need credible data to strengthen plant-health systems, pesticide oversight and food-safety protection.
Three priorities stand out.
First, Somaliland needs stronger crop-pest and disease surveillance, building on existing early-warning capacity while expanding monitoring to a wider range of crops and biological threats.
Second, it needs greater investment in local diagnostic, research and extension capacity, so that farmers and advisers can distinguish between pests, diseases and other causes of crop damage and identify interventions suited to local conditions.
Third, it needs stronger farmer and agro-dealer training, particularly in IPM, pest identification, pesticide safety, product selection, responsible application and pre-harvest intervals.
Recent evidence from Burao suggests that improving access to extension services and practical safety information could be particularly important. The researchers themselves describe their findings as preliminary and call for larger studies and further assessment of IPM in semi-arid smallholder systems.
That is an important distinction. Somaliland does not need to import a finished crop-protection model from elsewhere. It needs to build an evidence base that reflects its own crops, climate, farming systems and farmers.
Protecting crops without creating new problems
Somaliland cannot afford to lose crops to preventable pests and diseases. But neither can it afford to treat chemical spraying as the default answer to every agricultural problem.
The objective should not be pesticide-free agriculture at any cost. Nor should it be unrestricted reliance on chemical control.
The objective should be responsible crop protection.
That means using pesticides when they are genuinely justified, selecting appropriate products, applying them correctly and safely, and combining them with biological, cultural, mechanical and preventive measures that reduce unnecessary chemical intervention.
It also means recognizing that farmers are not simply recipients of agricultural advice. Their observations and experience are an important source of knowledge about changing pest patterns, crop performance and local conditions. That knowledge should be combined with scientific research, field surveillance and professional extension services.
The recent experience in Burao shows why this integrated approach matters: farmers operate within a value chain in which water availability, pest pressure, input markets, extension access, pesticide information and consumer awareness are all connected.
For a region facing climate uncertainty, environmental pressures and persistent food-security challenges, every harvest matters.
But how crops are protected matters too.
A resilient agricultural future for Somaliland will depend not only on producing more food, but on building a crop-protection system that protects the farmer, the consumer and the environment at the same time.
The answer is not to remove pesticides from agriculture regardless of circumstance. It is to make chemical control one tool among several, guided by diagnosis, monitoring, evidence and responsible practice.
Protect the crop. Protect the farmer. Protect the consumer. And use every effective tool—including pesticides—responsibly and only when the evidence says it is needed.
