African Locust Outbreak Spreads to Middle East
(Chaz Anon) What we are seeing in East Africa is unlike anything we’ve seen in 60 plus years. The destructive potential is mind blowing, and it’s occurring in a region where farmers need every gram of food to feed themselves and their families. Most of the countries that are hardest hit by this swarm are those where millions of people are already vulnerable or in serious humanitarian need.
The desert locust is considered the world’s most destructive migratory pest. A single locust can travel 150km and eat its own weight in food – about two grams – each day. A swarm the size of New York City can consume the same amount of food in one day as the total population of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Last year, alarm bells began ringing when large swarms of desert locusts migrated across the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia into Iran in a search for more crops to decimate—a never in modern history recorded event that scientists attributed to the large amounts of rainfall in Saudi Arabia—most critical to note because this massive rain disrupted what is known as the quiet periods know as recessions, in which desert locusts are usually restricted to the semi-arid and arid deserts of Africa, the Near East and South-West Asia.
Upon emerging from their “recessions” when the abundant rainfall awakened them, adult locust swarms can fly up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) a day with the wind—female locusts can lay 300 eggs within their lifetime while an adult insect can consume roughly its own weight in fresh food per day - about two grams every day—and a very small swarm eats the same amount of food in one day as about 35,000 people—which is, most certainly, not what the world is facing now, as just one unimaginable desert locust swarm sighted in northern Kenya was reportedly 2,400 square kilometers (1,491 square miles), that’s more than twice the size of Paris or New York—and within just one square kilometer of this massive swarm, sees it containing 40 to 80 million locust adults—and whose mass of hungry insects can cross continents and seas in search of food.
But the window to contain this crisis is closing fast. We only have until the beginning of March to bring this infestation under control as that is when the rain and planting season begins. The swarms are highly mobile; the terrain often difficult; the logistical challenges immense. But left unchecked – and with expected additional rains – locust numbers in East Africa could increase 500 times by June.
Nuclear armed foes India and Pakistan have set aside their differences to confront it head on, thus meaning that humanity’s only defense against this outbreak is the mass poisoning by deadly insecticides of these desert locusts in the night and/or earliest morning hours. The last time an outbreak like this occurred, in 1951, the Americans sent crop duster aircraft to Iran to confront a desert locust outbreak before it got any worse, yet today sees these Americans shamefully not being able to overcome their petty differences so they can begin flooding the world with their over 5,000 crop duster aircraft to end this outbreak before it wipes out the crops feeding the billions of human beings readying themselves to storm Europe and America before they starve to death.
We must act now to avoid a full-blown catastrophe. This is not the first time the Greater Horn of Africa has seen locust upsurges approach this scale, but the current situation is the largest in decades. Some believe this is linked to climate change. Warmer seas mean more cyclones, generating the perfect breeding conditions for locusts. Other attribute it to an angry God punishing humanity for it’s sinful behavior. Either way it is a problem we must work on together, as a global community, otherwise our society may shift out of balance in to total chaos.
