What I’ve Been Hearing About the Locust…

What I’ve Been Hearing About the Locust… The UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization said recently that the number of locusts in East Africa could expand 500 times by June. The desert locust may be the most dangerous yet. From what I understand, just a single small locust swarm, if it comes into a farmer’s field in the morning, by midday it has eaten the entire field. I’m hearing there are some swarms the size of entire cities. Desert locusts can have about 75 million to 150 million locust adults in each square mile of a swarm and travel up to 95 miles per day, according to the FAO. The current outbreak started in the areas around the Red Sea, a key winter breeding area for desert locusts, and spread through the Horn of Africa and into East Africa. As locusts devour crops in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the insects are breeding in Djibouti, Eritrea and Sudan—all areas that are prone to drought and food shortages. Swarms have arrived in Uganda, and locusts have also crossed into Tanzania. Swarms in Pakistan have damaged crops including wheat and cotton and the country declared a national emergency to combat the locust attack on Jan. 31. The insects have crossed over to India and damaged crops in the northwest states that border Pakistan. Somalia has also declared an emergency. In other words, the world may need to send a lot more wheat to these areas that will be battling to simple stay alive without crops to eat. There is an exponential increase in locust numbers with every new generation of breeding and a swarm the size of one square mile, containing about 75 million locusts, eats the same amount of food in one day as about 55,000 people. Keep this on your radar!