UN Food Security Agencies Call for Help in the Fight Against Eastern Africa Locust Invasion
By Khalifa Hemed
Published February 21, 2020
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations are appealing for urgent assistance from the international community in the fight of desert locusts that are destroying food crops and pastures across eastern Africa.
David Beasley, Executive Director of WFP, says that help should come now if the world is to avoid paying a much higher price in helping the region later.
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“FAO needs US$76 million to help stop the locusts,” Beasley says. “Do nothing now and WFP will need up to 15 times that amount – more than US$1 billion – to assist people devastated by losing crops and livelihoods. Preventing a catastrophe in East Africa is a far better investment than responding to its consequences and impact on the lives of millions across the region.”
The regional Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG) warnes that desert locust swarms are now multiplying across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia and more swarms have already also been observed in Eritrea, Djibouti and northeastern Uganda.
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“Given favourable forecast weather conditions, swarms are expected to increase in areas already affected, as well as spread to neighbouring areas. There is also a high risk that locusts will spread to South Sudan,” FSNWG, that comprises members from FAO, WFP, Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), says.
FSNWG forecasts that the start of the long rains season in March-April is likely to prompt the locusts, considered the world’s most dangerous migratory pest, to breed anew and spread even further.
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“Locust swarms have started laying eggs and another generation of breeding will increase locust numbers,” warns Keith Cressman, Senior Locust Forecasting Officer at FAO. “Urgent efforts must be made to stop them from increasing to protect the livelihoods of farmers and livestock holders.”
A swarm of one square kilometre, FAO says, can consume the equivalent of crops that could feed 35,000 people for a year.
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FAO, that says this is the worst outbreak of Desert Locusts seen in Ethiopia and Somalia in 25 years and the worst in 70 years in Kenya, estimates that tens of thousands of hectares of cropland and pasture have been damaged in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia with potentially severe consequences in a region where 11.9 million people are already facing food insecurity.
In Kenya, FAO says immature swarms are moving through northern, central and western areas and have so far invaded 18 counties. Some swarms have started to lay eggs that will hatch in early February and new swarms are expected to form in early April.
Swarms are present in eastern areas of Ethiopia and continue to move south and into the Rift Valley with a new generation of locusts expected to cause more damage.
In Somalia, swarms are present and breeding in the north-east as well as in the south near the Kenyan border.
As numbers continue to rise there is now serious concern that South Sudan and Uganda are under threat because some of the swarms in Kenya are only 200 kilometres away from the country’s borders with its neighbours.