The locusts are back, and they are hungry. Last year, an unprecedented plague of locusts devastated crops in eastern Africa, across the Middle East and throughout much of Asia. Many were hoping that it would just be a one year phenomenon, but now the locusts have returned and one British news source is using the world “biblical” to describe this second wave. At this moment, the Horn of Africa is being hit the hardest, and the UN is warning that this new infestation “threatens the livelihoods of more than 39 million people”…
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the next generation of locusts threatens the livelihoods of more than 39 million people in Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Kenya. Over recent months, the pests have been combated on 1.3 million hectares of land in the Horn of Africa. However, in northern and central Kenya, more than 15 districts, including many new areas, have already been severely affected by the second wave of locusts. Around 1.9 million people were already living in a precarious nutrition situation, which could now dramatically worsen.
One reporter recently had the opportunity to fly with a pilot that is tracking locust swarms in Kenya, and he was stunned when they came across a “swarm about twice the size of the City of London ready to devour every bit of vegetation in its wake”.
Can you imagine what it must be like for local farmers when millions upon millions of locusts suddenly show up in their area?
These locusts can literally wipe out an entire farm in as little as 30 seconds, and these swarms are capable of traveling vast distances in a single day…
Swarms can fly up to 150 kilometres a day with the wind, and a single square kilometre swarm can eat as much food in a day as 35,000 people.