Amor Nouira, a small-town farmer in Chebika in central Tunisia, has lost all hopes of saving his prickly pear cacti, now ravaged by the cochineal insect spreading across North Africa. "I no longer grow prickly pears. There's no solution," says Nouira. The 50-year-old has seen his half-hectare of cactus crops wither as the invasive insect wreaked havoc on about a third of the country's cacti population after an outbreak in 2021. "The only solution I have left is to bring in a machine to level the land and clear it so that I can replant with olive trees or other trees." IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES