East Africa faces locust swarms, UN agency alerts for the risk of food insecurity.
East Africa faces locust swarms, UN agency alerts for the risk of food insecurity across the subregion
UN News
20 January 2020
Climate Change
Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are dealing with desert locust swarms of “unprecedented size and destructive potential” that could spill over into more countries in East Africa, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned on Monday.
Destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of crops, the outbreak is further impacting the region’s food insecurity. The UN agency urged a collective campaign to deal with the crisis, alerting for the risk of the swarms spilling over into more countries in East Africa, “if efforts to deal with the voracious pest are not scaled up across the region”.
Moreover, unusual climate conditions have favoured rapid locust reproduction.
The agency stressed that as favourable breeding conditions continue, the increase in locust swarms could last until June. And left unchecked, the numbers of crop-devouring insects could grow 500 times by then...Kenya has not faced a locust threat of this magnitude in 70 years, FAO warned. The outbreak of desert locusts, considered the most dangerous locust species, also has affected parts of Somalia and Ethiopia, which have not seen desert locust swarms of this scale in 25 years.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/01/1055631
