'Unprecedented' and 'Devastating' locust swarms, UN asks for help..

[hobie]

(My original post in January)
This is a interesting development...

"The UN has called for international help to fight huge swarms of desert locusts sweeping through east Africa.

A spokesman for the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), called for aid to "avert any threats to food security, livelihoods, malnutrition".

Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are all struggling with "unprecedented" and "devastating" swarms of the food-devouring insects, the FAO has said.

The agency fears locust numbers could grow 500 times by June.

Ethiopia and Somalia have not faced an infestation on this scale for 25 years, while Kenya has not seen a locust threat this size for 70 years, the FAO said earlier this week. South Sudan and Uganda are also at risk if the swarms continue to grow and spread." Massive locust swarms spark UN appeal for help

"Swarms of locusts in east Africa have devastated crops and sent a passenger plane off course, and now the UN is warning that without international intervention the voracious insects threaten the food security of tens of millions of people." ‘Unprecedented’ Swarms of Locusts Are Devouring Crops and Slamming Into Planes in East Africa

and the updates as they spread....

Looks like the locust have spread to the Middle East, as it has hit Iran..

"Iran afflicted by large swarms of desert locusts, amid coronavirus woes

'The density of locusts in the swarms is so high that a 10 to 15-centimeter layer of dead locusts forms on the ground after spraying pesticides.'..

Iran afflicted by large swarms of desert locusts, amid coronavirus woes

It looks like its spreading even more than just the Middle East...

"In East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, traveling swarms of locusts the size of Manhattan are putting potentially hundreds of millions at risk of starvation in what the UN has called the worst outbreak in a quarter of a century.

What it means: "Millions will starve because clouds of approximately 80 million desert locusts per square kilometer are voracious," writes Robert Rotberg, founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict.

"In one day they consume wheat, barley, sorghum, or maize crops that feed 35,000 people. Masses the size of cities can consume 1.8 million metric tons of vegetation every day – enough to feed 81 million people."
"The United Nations is to test drones equipped with mapping sensors and atomizers to spray pesticides in parts of east Africa battling an invasion of desert locusts that are ravaging crops and exacerbating a hunger crisis."
The world's other plague: Locust swarms put millions at risk of starvation across Africa and Asia

here is latest video of it...
'They've Eaten Everything': Locust Swarms Destroy Harvests In Pakistan

 

[hobie]

And now today..
Science News

New, larger wave of locusts threatens millions in Africa
Billions of the young desert locusts are winging in from breeding grounds in Somalia in search of fresh vegetation springing up with seasonal rains.

April 10, 2020, 12:41 PM EDT
By Associated Press

Weeks before the coronavirus spread through much of the world, parts of Africa were already threatened by another kind of plague, the biggest locust outbreak some countries had seen in 70 years.

Now the second wave of the voracious insects, some 20 times the size of the first, is arriving. Billions of the young desert locusts are winging in from breeding grounds in Somalia in search of fresh vegetation springing up with seasonal rains.


Millions of already vulnerable people are at risk. And as they gather to try to combat the locusts, often in vain, they risk spreading the virus — a topic that comes a distant second for many in rural areas.

It is the locusts that “everyone is talking about,” said Yoweri Aboket, a farmer in Uganda. “Once they land in your garden they do total destruction. Some people will even tell you that the locusts are more destructive than the coronavirus. There are even some who don’t believe that the virus will reach here.”...

New, larger wave of locusts threatens millions in Africa

Billions of the young desert locusts are winging in from breeding grounds in Somalia in search of fresh vegetation springing up with seasonal rains.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[JRT]

When I was much younger (in the 1950s) I recall talking to an old farmer in Saskatchewan speaking of a locust swarm that devoured his crops in the early 1900s . His description was horrifying.

 

[Particular]

Will North America see a devastating grasshopper infestation like was seen in the early 1900s? Doubtful since many of those grasshoppers were there because the original plains were being tilled over and all those grasshoppers who once covered the fields had no habitat and food to eat.

But, who knows how far God will go in bringing people to repentance.

 

[hobie]

Well, this is getting huge...

"Africa's Huge Locust Swarms Are Growing at the Worst Time
As coronavirus takes hold and farmers plant crops, the continent faces a new wave of locusts 20 times larger than one earlier this year....

As the coronavirus pandemic exploded across the world earlier this year, another even more conspicuous plague was tearing through East Africa: locusts. The voracious little beasts are particularly fond of carbohydrates like grains, a staple of subsistence farmers across the continent. Back in January, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicted the worst was still to come, and that by June, the size of the swarms could grow by a factor of 500.

And now, at the worst time, a second wave of locusts 20 times bigger than the first has descended on the region, thanks to heavy rains late last month, according to the FAO. The swarms have infiltrated Yemen and firmly established themselves across the Persian Gulf, having laid eggs along 560 miles of Iran’s coastline. New swarms are particularly severe in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

"The timing is really horrendous, because the farmers are just planting, and the seedlings are just coming up now since it's the beginning of the rainy season," says Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer with the FAO. "And it's right at the same time when you have an increasing number of swarms in Kenya and in Ethiopia. There's already pictures and reports of the seedlings getting hammered by the swarms. So basically that's it for the farmers' crops."

“This represents an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods,” FAO officials wrote in a brief last week. All this is happening while the region locks down to stave off the coronavirus pandemic, and as travel restrictions mean experts can't get to countries to train people. It’d be hard to imagine a more brutal confluence of factors.".. Africa's Huge Locust Swarms Are Growing at the Worst Time