Samburu men try to fend off a swarm of desert locusts in Lemasulani village in Kenya. Picture: REUTERS/NJERI MWANGI
The Agricultural Research Council said though the risk of locust swarms invading SA and the rest of the region may be low, the country is prepared to manage or control such an outbreak with local expertise, pesticide stocks, spray aircraft and other measures. The council said it, together with the department of agriculture, has considerable experience in the management of locust outbreaks, based on previous incidents of red and brown locust that were successfully managed between 1980 to 2005.
“This has become a situation of international dimensions that threatens the food security of the entire subregion,” FAO director-general Qu Dongyu said last week.n Kenya, police facing the country’s largest outbreak in 70 years have fired machine guns and tear gas into swarms in an effort to prevent them from consuming fields. Ethiopia is spraying pesticide from small planes to displace hovering throngs, though swarms have forced passenger jets in the region to make emergency landings.
Locusts are part of a large group of insects commonly called grasshoppers. Swarms can travel between 5km and 130km or more in a day. A desert locust adult — the most devastating of all locust species — can consume about its own weight in fresh food a day — that is about 2g. A small part of an average swarm eats the same amount of food in one day as about 10 elephants or 25 camels or 2,500 people, according to the FAO.
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