Expanding locust swarms threaten food security across East Africa

Mar 01, 2020 News

www.worldpoliticsreview
Swarms of desert locusts that have already razed pastures and croplands across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya continue to spread throughout East Africa, jeopardising the food security of up to 20 million people. Just a small swarm of the insects can eat as much food as 35,000 people daily.

A farmer walks through swarms of desert locusts feeding on her crops, in Kitui County, Kenya, (AP photo by Ben Curtis).

The swarms, which can contain as many as 80 million adult locusts and travel up to 80 miles each day, have now moved south and west into Tanzania, Uganda and war-torn South Sudan, while also pushing further into the Horn of Africa. Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya remain at the epicenter of this crisis, though, despite weeks of aerial pesticide spraying.
The locust outbreak is the region’s largest in decades; officials are blaming unusually heavy rains that swept across East Africa late last year. The number of locusts could grow up to 500 times before drier weather arrives in June if the aerial spraying is not able to bring the swarms under control.
The extensive use of pesticides has raised its own concerns that it will do long-term damage to local ecosystems and seep into drinking water. Officials are balancing that risk against the immediate food security threat in a region where 12 million people already face food shortages.
Meanwhile CCTVE PLUS reported that in Pakistan swarms of desert locusts are destroying about 300,000-square-kilometers of farmland across Pakistan and threatening the livelihoods of farmers in the country’s main agricultural and populous region of Punjab.
The locusts arrived last summer and have reached threatening levels since November 2019. The Food and Agriculture Organization issued a warning that the swarm has started to reproduce, hence posing a huge threat to crop growing areas in the country.
The insects are wreaking havoc in the Okara district in southern Punjab, where crops such as cotton, wheat, maize and tomatoes have been destroyed.
“These locusts have destroyed everything, all our crops. We are very poor. We don’t know where our next meal will come from, no one has come to help us,” said Rafia Bibi, a resident of Okara.
The locust crisis hitting the agriculture sector in Pakistan comes as flour prices skyrocketed by 15 percent in January and sugar prices doubled compared to last year.
The locust invasion has made things all the more alarming for the government. Prime Minister Imran Khan declared a national emergency after Pakistan was hit by its worst locust plague in 27 years.

The current losses caused by locusts are also expected to cripple the food sector in Pakistan for the coming months.
http://www.cctvplus.com/news/20200222/8135925.shtml#!language=1

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