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Sunday, November 22, 2020


New Models Could Help African Countries Stop Locust Swarms Before They Start


HENRI TONNANG, THE CONVERSATION

21 NOVEMBER 2020



Several countries in East Africa – namely Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Sudan – are still trying to contain the worst desert locust invasion the region has experienced in over 70 years.

The locusts have destroyed vegetation – especially staple cereal crops, legumes, and pastures – resulting in huge economic losses. The World Bank estimates that these losses could reach US$8.5 billion by the end of the year.

Unlike many other grasshoppers, the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) can change from a harmless solitary phase to a destructive gregarious phase whereby hoppers (juveniles in their early, wingless stages) march together in bands.

The adults can fly and form giant swarms that can invade large areas away from their original breeding sites.


Currently, the countries are battling the second generation (or wave) of locusts, as they've already reproduced and hatched once within the region. And re-infestation could continue if the environment is conducive to it.

The desert locust breeds well in semi-arid zones. An ideal breeding site is characterised by warmth, vegetation close by and sandy soil with moisture and salt in it. The females usually lay their eggs at between 4 and 6 cm deep in the soil.

Governments have tried to control these insects through a range of efforts: from mobilising military units to using young people as locust cadets.

But trying to control and eliminate populations of flying locusts is expensive and not very effective. The best option, proved by scientists, is to manage them at their breeding sites.

Eggs survive and hatch when the environmental conditions are right – they can hatch within weeks or remain undeveloped for years. They're laid inside soil so can be hard to find; it's best that control measures – preferably biopesticides – are used when the locusts are at the surface in the form of a nymph or hopper.

For this to happen, targeted ground and aerial surveillance efforts to identify potential breeding sites are critical.

The most destructive locust swarm in East Africa happened over 70 years ago. Documentation of information was very poor, and so there was no prior knowledge of the region's potential breeding sites.

Along with my colleagues from the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology, I'm trying to fill this gap. We've developed maps that predict where desert locusts could breed in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan.

Our model, supported by a machine learning algorithm, establishes a relationship between historical data from around the world on desert locust breeding sites.

It also factors in climate and soil characteristics that are necessary for locusts to lay their eggs, and for the eggs to hatch.

Breeding sites can consist of anywhere between 40 to 80 million locusts within a square kilometre.

There is a need to target these high-risk areas and strengthen ground surveillance to manage the locusts in a timely, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly manner.

At-risk areas


Using the model, we've identified and mapped potential breeding regions of the desert locust in Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan.

Vast areas in Kenya are at high risk because they have the right conditions to support locust breeding. These areas include Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Marsabit, Turkana (all counties in North Eastern Kenya), and a few sites in Samburu county.

In Uganda, there are fewer possible breeding sites than in Kenya. These are restricted to the north-eastern regions, specifically Kotido, Kaabong, Moroto, Napak, Abim, Kitgum, Moyo, and Lamwo districts.

South Sudan is at risk of breeding in the northern regions and the south-east corner bordering Kenya. These sites exist in northern Bahr el Ghazal, Unity, Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria, Warrap, Lakes, and some parts of Jonglei state.

Actions

In line with these predictions, ground and aerial surveillance efforts and monitoring of weather and vegetation variables in the predicted breeding regions needs to be strengthened significantly.

Financial, material and human resources will also need to be mobilised for timely management of the hopper bands when they emerge.

We, at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology, have several suggestions on what must happen next:

Due to a large area for potential breeding of locusts, a permanent locust monitoring unit in Kenya must be established. It should consist of ground and aerial surveillance teams, locust biologists, socio-economists, remote-sensing experts and weather and vegetation forecasters.

A task force must be set up in Uganda to collaborate with Kenya's monitoring unit. Based on the overall cover area of desert locust breeding suitability in Uganda, it may not be necessary to invest in constant monitoring in the country.

But the task force must collaborate closely with the Kenyan Locust monitoring unit and enhance preparedness for possible outbreaks and swarms.

Sustainable locust management interventions and associated mobilisation of financial, logistical and human resources need to be closely linked with strengthened locust monitoring efforts.

There must be a greater focus on sustainable and biological control options against locusts to mitigate adverse impacts of chemical pesticide-based locust control strategy.

We believe that biopesticide applications should become a cornerstone in managing locust outbreaks. Biopesticides need to be rapidly field tested in Kenya, commercialised and scaled up.

Finally, the current desert locust outbreak is triggered by a change in rainfall pattern which expands areas of potential invasion as a consequence of climate variability or change.

It is possible that, in future, other marginally suitable areas and conditions may become conducive for locust breeding.

Therefore, it is important to ramp up modelling efforts to understand the potential impacts of climate change on the current model predictions.

Henri Tonnang, Research Scientist, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Locust Swarms, Some 3 Times the Size of New York City, Are Eating Their Way Across Two Continents

Climate change is worsening the largest plague of the crop-killing insects in 50 years, threatening famine in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS

MAR 22, 2020

Millions of locusts swarm in Tsiroanomandidy, Madagascar. 
Credit: Rijasolo/AFP via Getty Images

As giant swarms of locusts spread across East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East, devouring crops that feed millions of people, some scientists say global warming is contributing to proliferation of the destructive insects. 

The largest locust swarms in more than 50 years have left subsistence farmers helpless to protect their fields and will spread misery throughout the region, said Robert Cheke, a biologist with the University of Greenwich Natural Resources Institute, who has helped lead international efforts to control insect pests in Africa. 

"I'm concerned about the scale of devastation and the effect on human livelihoods," Cheke said, adding that he also worried about "the impending famines." 

"Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the region needs money and equipment to deploy insect control teams in the affected regions," he said.

New swarms are currently forming from Kenya to Iran, according to the the United Nations locust watch website. Addressing the outbreak requires urgent, additional funding and technical help from developed countries, Cheke said, because the tiny size and budget of the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization team responsible for locust monitoring and control is already overwhelmed.

Changes in plant growth caused by higher carbon dioxide levels, as well as heat waves and tropical cyclones with intense rains, can lead to more prolific and unpredictable locust swarming, making it harder to prevent future outbreaks. 

The desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) needs moist soil to breed. When rains are especially heavy, populations of the usually solitary insects can explode. In Kenya, one of the biggest swarms detected last year was three times the size of New York City, according to a March 12 article in the journal Nature. Swarms a fraction of that size can hold between 4 billion and 8 billion locusts.

At times, the locusts in East Africa have swarmed so thick that they have prevented planes from taking off and their dead bodies have piled up high enough to stop trains on their tracks.
Global Warming's Many Impacts on Insects

The changing climate has spurred other insect invasions. Warmer winters, for example, are magnifying an ongoing bark beetle outbreak in western North America. Until the 1980s, periodic cold snaps kept the beetles in check. But since then, the tree-killing bugs have swarmed—not as fast as desert locusts, but just as destructively. Since 2000, they've killed trees across about 150,000 square miles in Canada and the western U.S., an area nearly the size of California. In recent years, historic bark beetle outbreaks have also devastated European forests.

Other research shows that seasonal shifts caused by global warming are disrupting cycles of insect reproduction and plant pollination, including a recently documented decline of bumblebees, threatening food production in some areas. 

Global warming is also affecting the feeding and breeding patterns of North America's grasshoppers, species that behave similarly to locusts. In the 1930s, swarms of grasshoppers destroyed crops in the Midwest, even eating wooden farm tools and clothes that were drying outside. States like Colorado used flamethrowers and explosives to battle the insects.

It's hard to predict how grasshoppers will respond to today's changing climate, said University of Oklahoma biologist Ellen Welti, who studies the relationship between insects and plants. 

But, she said, "Warmer winters, with less egg mortality and changes in precipitation patterns that affect the amount and quality of plant food, could lead to outbreaks of particular grasshopper species or other herbivorous insects."

Locust outbreaks could be driven by changes in plant nutrients caused by extreme weather, Welti said, like more frequent soggy tropical storms, which make plants grow faster but dilute elements like nitrogen. "Locusts have a weird physiology—they like low nitrogen plants," she said of connections she explored in a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But the current locust outbreaks, Welti said, are occurring against the backdrop of an alarming global decline in overall insect abundance, which is also, to some degree, connected to climate change and will have far-reaching ecosystem impacts. 
Extreme Weather, Failed Governance Favor Swarms

Warm weather and heavy rains at the end of 2019 set up a perfect storm of breeding conditions for the destructive bugs. The outbreak followed an unusually active West Indian Ocean cyclone season with several of the storms bringing extreme rainfall to parts of East Africa. 

Studies in the last few years have showed that global warming is boosting the rainfall from tropical storms. Other recent research shows that human-driven warming may be intensifying a regional Indian Ocean pattern of warming and cooling that could exacerbate extremes like tropical storms, heavy rains and heat waves—all factors that can affect locust populations.

More moisture is a double-edged sword for the Horn of Africa, said Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, which addresses the human impacts of climate change.

"We need rain for agricultural productivity, but it is then also conducive to locust breeding," van Aalst said. "It's a classical case of rising risks partly due to rising uncertainties. But we can manage some of this uncertainty. In this case we have had good predictions of elevated risks, and it is concerning that it still takes us so long to respond."

Martin Huseman, head of the entomology department at the University of Hamburg Center for Natural Sciences, said, "In general I think it's partly climate change. We get more extreme weather conditions. The cyclones we had there in the region could lead to enhanced swarming." 

Locusts swarm out to find more food when they reach extremely dense populations during the nymph stage of their development. Aided by wind, the insects can travel more than 90 miles per day. Scientists warn they could spread across hundreds of thousands more square miles from Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia to Sudan, and across the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea into Iran, Pakistan and India. Such a spread would threaten the food supplies of 20 million people.

Those food shortages will mainly be felt later in the year, so there is still time to act by bolstering regional food supplies, van Aalst said. But travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic will challenge locust control projects, as well as relief efforts. According to the UN's locust watch program, the countries facing the biggest risk are Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan and Sudan. 

Cheke said poor monitoring, conflict and a breakdown of governance in key locust breeding areas enabled the recent outbreak to grow unchecked, and threatens the progress made in controlling locusts during the last half century.

"It all started with substantial rainfall in May and October 2018 allowing good desert locust breeding in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula to continue until March 2019, where it was not noticed and thus left uncontrolled," he said. 
Swarms Could Expand Their Range and Emerge More Frequently

Huseman said that, in the global warming era, other parts of the world may also need to prepare for unexpected insect invasions as part of larger scale shifts in the distribution of animals. In northern Germany, for example, scientists recently spotted Asian wasps for the first time. A 2013 study found that crop-damaging insects are moving poleward at about 4 miles per year.

In addition to the ongoing plague of locusts around the Horn of Africa, there have been recent outbreaks of varying intensity in places like Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea, and Las Vegas

David Inouye, a University of Maryland biologist who studies the effects of global warming on plants and animals, said conditions favoring outbreaks are becoming more common.

"I think that there is the potential for locust swarms to become more frequent, and potentially more widely distributed, as the environmental factors like rain and warm temperatures that favor their outbreaks continue to become more prevalent," he said. Some insects have a strict biological clock, but locusts respond strongly to environmental factors like precipitation and temperature.

Arianne Cease, a researcher at Arizona State University's School of Sustainability, said there are other factors related to climate that could promote locust swarms. Livestock grazing, rising carbon dioxide levels and extreme rainfall all lower nitrogen levels in plants—exactly the conditions that locusts thrive on.

"However," she said, "a direct link between atmospheric CO2, plant nutrients and swarming grasshoppers or locusts has yet to be tested, to my knowledge." 

Cheke said it's unlikely, but possible, that locusts could swarm into new regions.

"With climate change it is possible that increasing aridity or changes in rainfall patterns could lead to locusts expanding their usual geographical range," he said. "For instance, in October 1988 desert locusts crossed the Atlantic but the habitat on the other side was unsuitable. Similarly, there are cases of desert locusts reaching the U.K. and Italy." 

He believes several important questions remain to be answered, including whether locusts' speed of development from egg to maturity—which is temperature dependent—has increased in line with global warming.

"What I think is worth considering is whether climate change has led to habitat changes," he said. "Or changes ... regarding rainfall that might facilitate the success and spread of a locust plague once it has started. Or if climate change, through its effects on weather changes, could lead to changes in the locusts' usual migration routes."

In Africa, some of those questions have already been answered. Colin Everard, formerly with the Royal Aeronautical Society (U.K.), worked on locust control in Africa for 40 years. The increase in regional tropical cyclone activity during the last few years is certainly a factor, he said, as such storms are known to cause locust plagues.

"If this trend continues, for sure there will be more desert locust outbreaks in the Horn of Africa," he said. "There will be hunger and starvation in northeastern Kenya, the area which borders Somalia. Apart from humans, livestock will also starve to death due to the destruction of grazing."

Saturday, October 31, 2020

Southern Africa faces new locust plague

Biblical locust swarms are laying waste to southern Africa's crops. But lessons learnt from a similar plague in East Africa show that regional cooperation and early detection are key to avoiding an equally big disaster.


As the rainy season approaches in southern Africa, fears are rising of a locust infestation. This year, a similar plague swept through East Africa, with swarms decimating grasslands and trees.

Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and most recently Angola have already been affected. The livelihoods of farmers and cattle herders, who are already dealing with food shortages caused by a crippling drought, are at stake.

Read more: East Africa: Why are locusts so destructive?

According to Mathew Abang, southern Africa's Crop Production Officer for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the effects in rural areas is already substantial. In Zambia alone, locusts have already infested some 300,000 hectares (741,000 hectares). Meanwhile, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) reports 45 million people could be facing food shortages.

Experience of the locust plague in East Africa has shown that both regional cooperation and finances are lacking, making it even more difficult to stop the insatiable swarms.


Kenya was badly hit by a locust plague earlier this year
Insecticides in short supply

As farmers prepare to plant their crops ahead of the November rainy season, newly hatched locusts are lying in wait. This means the already strained humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is likely to get even worse.

"The harvests in May were bad," Regina Feindt from the German NGO Welthungerhilfe told DW from Zimbabwe. "The country has been going through a two-year long drought, and the economy is on its knees."

The lockdown measures implemented to stem the coronavirus pandemic have not helped matters, either.

"The Ministry of Agriculture does not have enough insecticides and has already asked us if we can deliver these," Feindt adds.

The locusts have already infested previously unaffected areas in Zimbabwe's southern and western regions.

Read more: Tiny bugs with destructive powers

Meanwhile in neighboring Zambia, the locust infestation has spiralled. The FAO emergency plan involves Zambia and affected neighboring countries identifying and monitoring hotspots better. This includes killing the locusts before they can gather in swarms.

The FAO has made technology and funds available so that the locust swarms can be subdued with chemicals. However, topping-up stocks of insecticide remains a major challenge.

Adult locusts can eat can eat three times their own body-weight per day and travel hundreds of kilometers

Namibia also urgently needs insecticides, says Farayi Zimudzi, leader of the FAO-bureau in Windhoek. Because most of southern Africa buys insecticides from the same supplier, deliveries have been delayed. But time is running out, particularly in Namibia's eastern Kavango and Zambezi regions.

"Food security will be seriously impacted because newly planted crops and any crops that are currently standing in the fields right now are at risk of being totally annihilated," Zimudzi told DW.

Read more: How East Africa is fighting locusts and coronavirus

An early warning system would be a major weapon against locust invasions, but monitoring is difficult in remote areas, Zimudzi adds.
Lack of membership payments stunt monitoring efforts

Frances Duncan, head of the University of Witwatersrand's Institute for Animal, Plants and Environmental Sciences in Johannesburg, sees the situation more critically.

Theoretically, FAO member states pay scientists over time to monitor rural and farming areas. The body of work produced is used to create models which monitor climate, rainfall and cyclones.

This information is vital in predicting the probability of locust plagues. However, "when there are no locusts around, governments tend to forget that this is a problem," Duncan told DW.

"Recently member countries have actually not paid and there's no money to have people surveilling," she explains.


Pick-up trucks modified to spray insecticides have helped slow locust invasions, but they are in short supply

This cost-cutting can prove expensive in the long run. Detecting locust swarms early and taking action means swarms can be destroyed in their infancy when the hatchlings can only hop, covering just two or three kilometers a day. This is a far cry from the capabilities of adult flying locusts, which can cover hundreds of kilometers.

"When we have people on the ground looking to see what the local populations are doing, then we can try and chemically control them before they actually reach plague status," says Duncan.

This would require farmers to develop a centralised system where observations from remote rural areas can be shared quickly and action can be taken.
More regional cooperation needed

For Duncan, the lesson from East Africa is clear: Regional cooperation across borders is essential to stamping out locust infestations.

Atinkut Mezgebu Wubneh speaks from experience. The head of Agriculture and Rural Development of Tigray in northern Ethiopia has first hand knowledge of coordinating an inter-regional effort to stop a locust plague

"The sustainable solution is that the remedial measures can't be done separately. The countries should come together and act in a well-organised way," he told DW. "Otherwise it is difficult to combat the desert locust as the insect moves across countries."

This article was translated from German by Cai Nebe.

Watch video06:17
Why we're seeing the worst locust invasion in decades
https://www.dw.com/en/southern-africa-faces-new-locust-plague/a-55435551

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

How East Africa is fighting locusts amid coronavirus
DATA ANALYSIS
East Africa is battling its worst locust invasion in decades. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, countries are fighting to stop a new generation of locusts swarms, which could jeopardize food security.




Since 2019, East Africa has been desperately trying to control a devastating desert locust invasion. The long rains that typically fall across the region from March to May this year will probably allow yet another generation of locusts to mature, further threatening crops and livelihoods.

This would be an additional blow to food security in East African countries, which are also facing economic disruption from the coronavirus pandemic response.

Read more: Severe hunger threatens Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns

In the region, swarms of desert locusts covered more than 2,000 square km – an area as big at Ethiopia's Lake Tana – in April alone.

Swarms of this size are made up of billions of insects, which can obliterate vegetation, eating more in a day than the combined population of Kenya and Somalia do.

https://www.dw.com/en/locusts-hit-east-africa-during-coronavirus/a-53357078
Watch video



UN sounds alarm as locusts spread in East Africa

Ethiopia and Kenya are currently the worst hit by the locust infestation.

New waves of locusts are forecast for the coming months in Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia as seasonal rains create favorable breeding conditions.


"The next generation of swarms will be around late June or early part of July," says Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

The timing is particularly worrying as this would coincide with the start of the harvest season.

Crops wiped out


Desert locust swarms strip almost all green vegetation from crops and trees over immense areas, leaving behind ravaged fields and pasture lands and putting both farmers and pastoralists at risk of severe food shortages.

It's predicted more than 25 million people in East Africa will experience food insecurity in 2020 with the locust infestations compounding the situation.


Some farmers lost 90 percent of their crops in the first wave of locust to hit Ethiopia, says Yimer Seid of Ethiopia's South Wollo agricultural department.

"I visited families who have no food in their house. They sold their animals," he says.

Perfect conditions for desert locusts

A disastrous combination of circumstances fueled the current desert locust plague.

In 2018, two cyclones in succession unleashed rain in the immense sandy desert on the southern Arabian Peninsula known as the Empty Quarter. The moist sand and sprouting vegetation provided favorable conditions for the locusts to thrive.

Solitary desert locusts are usually harmless. If they are packed densely enough, however, the insects change behavior and even appearance, forming large groups that devour everything in their path. Groups of young, wingless locusts form bands, which eventually mature into fast-moving swarms.

In the Empty Quarter, the locusts multiplied unnoticed for three generations, increasing their original number 8,000-fold before swarms migrated up the Arabian Peninsula to Yemen.

Watch video Locusts threaten food security in East Africa

Locusts are common in Yemen but its ongoing civil war has devastated the country's ability to monitor and fight the insects.

From Yemen, in 2019 the desert locust swarms traveled north to Iran then to Pakistan and India.


They were also carried on the wind across the Red Sea to northeastern Ethiopia, south Eritrea and Somalia, where higher than average rainfalls over the 2019 summer allowed the locusts to proliferate.

Ongoing locust crisis

That's when FAO declared an emergency, increasing and prioritizing equipment and monitoring efforts.

"We started fast tracking everything because we knew the situation was going to be out of control very quickly," says Cressman from the FAO.

But despite FAO and other organizations moving as fast as they could to curb the spread of the locusts, their sheer numbers meant they were already hard to control.

In December 2019, the insects started swarming into Kenya in what has turned into the worst outbreak the country has experienced in 70 years.


To make matters worse, East Africa's short rains, which normally fall from October to December, continued into 2020, allowing this first wave of swarms to mature and start laying eggs.

Now, the region has to fight this new generation as it hatches, before it creates the new swarms predicted for June.

Fighting the locusts

Managing locust swarms is best done before they even form. Regular monitoring is essential, since small numbers of the insects can be controlled relatively easily.

"It's not difficult to kill a locust. You put pesticide on the locust and it dies," says Cressman.

Normally, this is done by teams on the ground spraying pesticides from hand-held tanks, reinforced by planes or helicopters.

Read more: Why locusts are so destructive in East Africa

The problem with the current infestation is its sheer scale, he says.

"It's like a forest fire. If you find it really small as a campfire, you just put it out. But if you miss it, then it becomes a wildfire, and the problem gets much more difficult and expensive to control."

Time of the essence
Countries like Kenya, having little recent experience with locusts, took a few months to set up control operations. With locusts multiplying exponentially, that's valuable time lost.

Authorities in the affected countries have already sprayed pesticides on thousands of hectares of land. But if the weather conditions don't dry up, that might not be enough.

Control operations are falling behind: In April, only a quarter of the area affected by locusts was treated. Locust populations are expected to increase 20- or even 400-fold in the months to come.


Locusts multiply faster than control operations can keep up.

Helping hands

Spraying isn't the only way of weathering the devastation caused by the locusts.

In Ethiopia's South Wollo Zone, the community worked together in 2019 to bring in the harvest before the locusts could devour them.

"We harvested the crops in cooperation with everyone," says Yimer Seid. "There would have been around 100 people in a large field …, all volunteers from the region."

He's also seen more examples of people in the community sharing crops and food with each other to make sure people don't go hungry.

Two crises at once

The coronavirus pandemic makes such community action much harder. Although Ethiopia isn't under a strict lockdown, the movement of people is restricted by a national emergency decree.

Normally, agricultural officers in South Wollo would monitor the locusts in the field, explained Seid. Now farmers send in their reports online or over the phone, making it harder to assess the situation.

Overall, though, monitoring efforts and pesticide spraying operations are continuing in Ethiopia as locust control counts as an essential service.


But with new swarms on their way, Ethiopia desperately needs to scale up its operations, says Fatouma Seid from FAO Ethiopia. This should include "more teams on the ground, more vehicles for the government and more pesticides on the ground in addition to the air control."

However, the current stock of pesticides will only tide over locust control in Ethiopia up to June, she says.

As for neighboring Somalia, the country currently has enough pesticide at hand to spray around 2,000 square km.

That will cover the first phase of controlling hoppers (the juvenile locust, which can't fly) up to July, says Alphonse Owuor, Crop Protection Officer with FAO Somalia.

More pesticide is available if needed, Owuor says.

"We have been in constant contact with the supplier since late 2019. They are aware of our requirements for the rest of the year and are on standby on the event we will need more supplies urgently."

Anticipating future invasions difficult

African countries are much better equipped to tackle the locust threat than they used to be.

In the past, locusts plagues regularly swept across the continent. In the 1950s, the insects ate their way through countries in West and East Africa all the way to India and Pakistan in a plague lasting 13 years.

But in the last few decades, thanks to better monitoring and control, the infestations have tended to last for a shorter time and cover less area. Ethiopia and Somalia, for example, haven't experienced an outbreak of this scale in 25 years


Now though, predicting locust invasions has become harder is harder as weather patterns become more erratic due to climate change change.

"The desert locust is just one long, continuous story," says Cressman. "It's about figuring out the current chapter of that story."

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Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Study recommends greater awareness of biopesticides to help fight locust outbreaks in China

A new study led by scientists from the Chinese MARA-CABI Joint Laboratory for Biosafety suggests greater awareness of biopesticide market availability, efficacy and field application processes could help tackle locust outbreaks in China.


Peer-Reviewed Publication

CABI

Locusts attacked by the fungus Metarhizium sp. 

IMAGE: LOCUSTS ATTACKED BY THE FUNGUS METARHIZIUM SP. view more 

CREDIT: CSIRO/VIA SCIENCEIMAGE.CSIRO.AU (CC BY 3.0)

A new study led by scientists from the Chinese MARA-CABI Joint Laboratory for Biosafety suggests greater awareness of biopesticide market availability, efficacy and field application processes could help tackle locust outbreaks in China.

The researchers, who outline their findings in the journal Sustainability, argue that future studies should also focus on modelling the expected impact and cost effectiveness of chemicals verses biopesticides – therefore increasing the evidence base for promoting more environmentally friendly biopesticide use.

Locusts are among the world’s most destructive pests that cause significant financial loss and ecological damage in many parts of the world. In China, the scientists highlight that locust outbreaks have a 3,000-year history and – along with floods and droughts – are considered the three biggest natural disasters for the country.

They add that successes have been achieved by using emerging technologies – including spraying of the locusts using drones, GPS tracking, GIS mapping and satellite data imagery – but chemical pesticides in China and other countries remains the primary method of control for the pests.

Though, China has made great strides with the use of biopesticides, the researchers stress and further highlight that a reason why chemical pesticides are chosen is due to their fast action despite more negative impacts on the environment.

The scientists say that the uptake of biopesticides remains low due to various factors including inconsistent field results, shorter product life, high costs and effectiveness on a smaller range of pests as compared to other products. Despite this, there is increasing evidence of the benefits of biopesticides in general, including for locusts.

Dr Hongmei Li, lead author of the paper and Senior Scientist, based at CABI’s centre in China, said, “Our findings show that China has an integrated national locust response protocol, which involves various institutions from all administrative levels of government.

“The process is inherently highly complex but efficient with multi-sectoral agencies working closely together to prevent and/or manage locust outbreaks.

“In addition, the process has been successful in combating recent outbreaks, due to dedicated government funding, decisive administrative and technical actions as well as the empowerment of local government administration.”

She adds that this is particularly the case with the county level acting as a ‘first responder’ that is financially and technically able to respond to a locust invasion in their jurisdiction.

Co-author, Dr Mariam Kadzamira, Senior Researcher, Agribusiness, based at CABI’s head office in Wallingford, UK, said, “Our research also shows that despite the availability of biopesticides in local markets, their use is dampened by inadequate information about market availability, negative perceptions by decision-makers about their efficacy and concerns about their costs as well as limited knowledge of their application techniques.

“Actions are, therefore, needed by relevant authorities to enhance stakeholder awareness of biopesticide market availability, efficacy and field application processes.”

The researchers stress that to increase the use of biopesticides for locust control there should be evidence-based local exemplars and case studies, and where possible, this should include comparisons with the long-term outcomes of using biopesticides verses chemical pesticides on locust populations.

They further add that since pest outbreaks necessitate quick and decisive actions for success, information packages should be made available to decision-makers on an on-going basis – not just when there is an outbreak.

Dr Hongmei Li added, “In addition, other research should centre around metrics-based process mapping that includes analysing the time lag between strategic actions during a locust outbreak.”

Dr Kadzamira highlighted that this would “facilitate a better understanding and mapping of work flows and would contribute to improving the efficiency of different actors across all relevant administrative structures, in the event of a locust emergency.”

The scientists based their research on Yunnan Province as a case study as it was one of the worst areas affected in the 2020 locust invasion. It was also chosen as efforts to control the locusts during this invasion were relatively successful and, therefore, understanding the processes could inform future management of the pest, for China, as well as for other countries.

 

Additional information

Main image: The desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is one of the world’s most destructive migratory pests (Credit: Pixabay).

Full paper reference

Li, H.; Kadzamira, M.A.T.J.; Ogunmodede, A.; Finch, E.; Zhu, J.; Romney, D.; Luke, B. Lessons Learned and Challenges of Biopesticide Usage for Locust Management—The Case of China. Sustainability 2023, 15, 6193. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15076193

The paper can be read open access here: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/7/6193/html

Funding acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge the funding provided for this research by the following organizations and agencies: the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) (Grant No.ST/V000306/1), and China’s Donation to the CABI Development Fund (Grant No. IVM10051).

CABI is an international intergovernmental organisation, and we gratefully acknowledge the core financial support from our member countries (and lead agencies) including the United Kingdom (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office), China (Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs), Australia (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research), Canada (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada), Netherlands (Directorate-General for International Cooperation), and Switzerland (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). See https://www.cabi.org/about-cabi/who-we-work-with/key-donors/ for full details.

Disclaime

Friday, February 07, 2020


How a single locust becomes a plague

BBC Visual Journalism Team
7 February 2020
World

Vast swarms of desert locusts are tearing through the Horn of Africa and south Asia, devouring crops and threatening food supplies and livelihoods. It's the worst infestation in a quarter of a century. How did it get so bad?

Locust plagues have become less frequent in recent decades


Source: FAONote: Recession means locusts are present at low density; upsurge means several locust outbreaks have accelerated through breeding; a plague means widespread and heavy infestations for more than a year; the end of a plague is called a decline.

A desert locust like this - a type of grasshopper - usually likes to live a shy, solitary life. It develops from an egg into a young locust - known as a hopper - and then into a flying adult. It's a simple, if unremarkable, existence.

But every now and then, desert locusts undergo a Jekyll and Hyde transformation. When they get crowded together - such as on diminishing areas of green vegetation - they stop being solitary creatures and become "gregarious" mini-beasts.

In this newly-sociable phase, the insects change colour and form groups that can develop into huge flying swarms of ravenous marauding pests.

Such swarms of locusts can be huge. They can contain up to 10 billion individuals and stretch over hundreds of kilometres. They can cover up to 200km (120 miles) in a day, devastating rural livelihoods in their relentless drive to eat and reproduce.

Even an average swarm can destroy crops sufficient to feed 2,500 people for a year, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The last major upsurge - a sharp rise in the number of swarms - in West Africa in 2003-05 cost $2.5bn in harvest losses, according to the UN.

But there were also large and damaging upsurges in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Some of them spanned multiple regions, reaching the numbers required to be declared a "plague".

Overall, the FAO estimates the desert locust affects the livelihood of one in 10 people on the planet - making it the world's most dangerous migratory pest.


Swarms are devastating crops in East Africa and Pakistan

The worst swarms of desert locusts in decades are now decimating crops and pasture across the Horn of Africa - an area covering Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia - and beyond, threatening the food security of the entire sub-region.

The ravenous insects are currently spreading through Kenya after wreaking havoc in Somalia and Ethiopia. It is the worst infestation in Kenya for 70 years and the worst in Somalia and Ethiopia for 25.

Somalia has declared a national emergency in response to the crisis. It is the second country to do so after Pakistan, where the insects have ravaged cotton, wheat, maize and other crops in eastern areas.

But it is the Horn of Africa that is of most concern, the FAO says, with the locusts breeding so fast that numbers could grow 500 times by June.

A number of countries are on locust alert
Source: FAO, February 2020

Some swarms could reach Uganda and South Sudan in the coming days and the upsurge could become a regional plague if not tackled, the FAO has warned.

The pests had already destroyed more than 175,000 acres of farmland in Somalia and Ethiopia by the end of December.

They are eating 1.8m tonnes of vegetation a day across 350 sq km (135 sq miles), the FAO says.

The organisation believes one swarm in Kenya covered an area 40km by 60km (25 miles and 40 miles).
How much can a locust consume?An adult desert locust can eat its own weight in food every day - about 2g  
Source: FAO

Authorities in the region now fear the locust crisis could lead to a drop in agricultural production, further threatening food suplies in an area already reeling from the effects of floods and drought. More than 20 million people in the region could be affected, the UN says.

"We're most concerned about Kenya and Ethiopia because these are the two areas that have very large swarms," says Keith Cressman, the FAO's senior locust forecasting officer.

"In addition, in Ethiopia, there is breeding going on so there are locusts increasing in number."

Ali Bila Waqo, a 68-year-old farmer working in north-eastern Kenya, was hopeful of a good grain harvest this season, with recent rainfall ending a long period of drought.

But the locusts have destroyed all his maize and beans.

"They ate most of our grains and what they didn't eat, dried up," he says. "That has hurt us a lot. We saw the food with our eyes but we never even got to enjoy it."

Mr Waqo, who remembers a previous locust infestation in the 1960s, describes how the swarms blacken the skies.

"It gets dark and you can't even see the sun," he says.

Extreme weather has fuelled the crisis

The causes of the current infestation go back to the cyclones and heavy rains of 2018-19.

Desert loscusts typically live in the arid areas of about 30 countries between West Africa and India – a region of about 16 million sq km (6.2 million sq miles).

But the wet, favourable conditions two years ago on the southern Arabian Peninsula allowed three generations of locusts to flourish undetected, the UN says.
The upsurge has been developing since 2018

Source: FAO, January 2020

By early 2019, the first swarms headed to Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iran, breeding further before moving to East Africa.

Further swarms formed and by the end of last year had developed in Eritrea, Djibouti and Kenya.



Swarms are also developing along both sides of the Red Sea, affecting Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and along the India-Pakistan border - a situation the UN has described as "extremely alarming".

Even though such infestations are notoriously hard to battle because of the wide geographical area affected, the FAO's Mr Cressman believes more could have been done earlier to tackle this particular locust upsurge.

"If there were greater and more successful efforts of control made in some of the key countries, it might have minimised the situation," he said.

People are trying to tackle the huge swarms

With the locust swarms in the Horn of Africa now unprecedented in terms of their size and destructive potential, countries are scrambling to deal with them.

Containment of the outbreak depends on two major factors - monitoring and effective control.

The Desert Locust Information Service, run by the FAO, provides forecasts, early warning and alerts on the timing, scale and location of invasions and breeding.

But once populations reach critical levels, such as in the Horn of Africa, urgent action needs to be taken to reduce locust populations, as well as prevent more swarms from forming and spreading.
How locust swarms are tackled 
Source: FAO

"Very large-scale aerial control operations are needed now in Kenya and in Ethiopia - and ideally in Somalia, but this is just not possible due to the security situation," says Mr Cressman.

"As the [locust] populations now are mainly in mature swarms, it would be ideal to hit them hard with aircraft, so that we can reduce the number that could mature and lay eggs."

Although there is ongoing research into more environment-friendly solutions, such as biological pesticides or introducing natural predators, the most commonly used control method is pesticide spray.

Showered onto the pests via hand pumps, land vehicles or aircraft, whole swarms can be targeted and killed with chemicals in a relatively short period of time.

Efforts to combat the invasion in Kenya have intensified with aerial spraying, but controlling such large populations over large, remote areas remains a logistical challenge.

It is especially difficult in countries and regions that have not had to deal with locusts for decades, as there is no infrastructure in place and no collective memory.

"It can cause considerable panic when swarms do come back," says Mr Cressman.

Action taken in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya - as well as Pakistan - will now determine what happens next. If the current upsurge crosses more borders and infests more regions, devastating more crops, it could be declared a "plague".

The UN says aerial and ground spraying operations in the region are currently "insufficient" and it has appealed to international donors for $70m (£54m) in emergency aid to help tackle the crisis.

But for Kenyan farmer Ali Bila Waqo and his family, any action now will be too late. The only thing they could do to battle the pests when they descended was to bang on jerrycans and shout.

Yet, he remains philosophical about what has happened.

"It is God's will. This is his army," he says.

Credits

Words and production by Lucy Rodgers, field production by Joe Inwood, design by Zoe Bartholomew and Millie Wachira, development by Becky Rush, Catriona Morrison and Purity Birir. Locust images by Swidbert R Ott and Stephen Rogers and Getty Images. Kenya farming images by the BBC.


SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BIBLICAL
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PLAGUE
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=LOCUSTS
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=AFRICA
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KENYA

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SOMALIA
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PAKISTAN


Sunday, February 09, 2020

Next East Africa locust swarms airborne in 3 to 4 weeks, UN warns

Baby desert locusts in Somalia will become East Africa's next plague wave, UN agronomy experts have warned. Climate change-driven rain has triggered "unprecedented" breeding, says UN chief Antonio Guterres.


The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned Sunday that nymph (baby) desert locusts maturing in Somalia's rebel-held backcountry, where aerial spraying is next to unrealizable, will develop wings in the "next three or four weeks" and threaten millions of people already short of food.

Once in flight and hungry, the swarm could be the "most devastating plague of locusts in any of our living memories if we don't reduce the problem faster than we are doing at the moment," said UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock.

Read more: Why are locusts so destructive?

The locusts were now "very hungry teenagers," but once mature, their progeny would hatch, generating "about a 20-fold increase" in numbers, warned Keith Cressman, FAO locust forecasting officer.

"Mother Nature" alone would not solve the crisis, said Dominique Burgeon, resilience director of the FAO, which has urged international donors to give $76 million (€69.4 million) immediately.

Swarms, which left damage across parts of Ethiopia and Kenya in December, could also put Uganda, South Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti at risk, making it the worst such situation in 25 years, the FAO said.

East Africa already has 19 million people facing acute food insecurity, according to the regional inter-agency Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG).

Read more: Pakistan declares national emergency over locust swarms

East Africa struggles against locust swarms

'Huge' consumption of foodstuffs and fodder

Somalia last week declared a locust emergency, with its agriculture minister, Said Hussein Iid, warning that "food sources for people and their livestock are at risk."

Desert locusts, normally solitary but triggered to swarm by certain conditions, could consume "huge amounts of crops and forage" when present in large numbers, said Iid.

Experts say aerial pesticide spraying is the only effective control, but that the current hotspot for maturing locusts is in an inaccessible swathe of Somalia held by or under threat by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group.

"This is where it begins," FAO spokesman Alberto Trillo Barca said at a police-guarded press briefing in northern Somalia attended by The Associated Press news agency.

"In the next three or four weeks, these nymphs, as we call them, will develop wings," Barca said on Thursday.

Read more: Locust swarms plague East Africa as wildfires burn Australia


These officials in Puntland, Somalia, are spraying by hand, but only aerial spraying is really effective, say experts

'Unprecedented locust crisis'


UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, as an African Union (AU) summit kicked off, said Saturday: "There is a link between climate change and the unprecedented locust crisis plaguing Ethiopia and East Africa."

"Warmer seas mean more cyclones generating the perfect breeding ground for locusts. This is getting worse by the day," said Guterres.

Climate experts point to a rain-bearing cyclone that reached Somalian waters in December. Its winds had carried locusts from the Arabian Peninsula. Last week, the FAO said swarms had also been sighted in Oman and Yemen.

The locust density in East Africa was so high that even normal drier weather would still fail to inhibit another breeding generation, said Burgeon.


A locust swarm in Jijiga in Ethiopia in January decimated crops

Replacement crop unrealistic

A farmer in Kenya's eastern Kitui County, Esther Kithuka, told the Reuters news agency last Monday that she was worried about crop destruction. Another growing season due to start in April would be too short for any meaningful production.

Since last century, six desert locust plagues or what experts called region-wide "upsurges" have occurred. One of the worst occurred in 2003-2005 in North and West Africa.



SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BIBLICAL
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PLAGUE
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=LOCUSTS
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=AFRICA
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KENYA
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SOMALIA
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PAKISTAN

Thursday, May 28, 2020


India faces its worst locust swarm in nearly 30 years

The pests have destroyed over 50,000 hectares of cropland, putting further strain on the food supply in India as authorities battle to contain the coronavirus.




On Tuesday, Indian authorities sent out drones and tractors to track desert locusts and spray them with insecticides, in one of the worst locust swarms seen by the country in nearly 30 years. With about 50,000 hectares of cropland destroyed by locusts, India is facing its worst food shortages since 1993.

"Eight to 10 swarms, each measuring around a square kilometer, are active in parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh," K.L. Gurjar, the deputy director of India's Locust Warning Organization, told news agency AFP. The locusts have also made their way to other states of India including Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

On Monday, a swarm of locusts infested the city of Jaipur in Rajasthan, after traveling into India from Pakistan. Gurjar warned that the locusts could move towards the capital city of Delhi if wind speed and direction was favorable.


More than half of the 33 districts in Rajasthan were affected by the locusts

Why a locust swarm is alarming

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) desert locusts typically attack the western part of India and some parts of the state of Gujarat from June to November. However, the Ministry of Agriculture's Locust Warning Organization spotted them in India as early as April this year.

A swarm of 40 million locusts can eat as much food as 35,000 humans, according to FAO estimates. The current swarm has destroyed seasonal crops in the states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. This will lead to lower production than usual and a rise in prices of foodstuff.

An agrarian crisis and subsequent food inflation will severely impede India's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of migrant workers have died from hunger after India suddenly imposed a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, leaving workers penniless. An agrarian crisis because of a locust swarm will further hamper relief efforts of the government.

Heavy rains and cyclones in the Indian Ocean are being cited by experts as reasons for increased breeding of locusts this year. The attack is also spread over a wider geography in India. The FAO has warned that the locust infestation will increase next month, when locusts breeding in East Africa reach India.

Other parts of the world affected by locusts

India isn't the only country attacked by a huge swarm of locusts this year. Pakistan,countries in East Africa, and Yemen have also faced the desert pests and their destruction. In February, Pakistan declared a national emergency because of locust attacks in the eastern part of the country. The pests damaged cotton, wheat, maize and other crops.

Earlier this month, the FAO said that it had made a headway in dealing with the locust invasion by saving 720,000 tons of cereal in 10 countries


Date 27.05.2020

Related Subjects India

Keywords India, locusts, crops, famine

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3coS



Historic swarm of locusts descends upon India, destroying cropsMay 27 (UPI) -- India is experiencing a historic swarm of locusts as the country also deals with the COVID-19 pandemic and sweltering heat.

Swarms of desert locusts have descended upon portions of the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya, Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, while alerts were issued in the capital city of Delhi warning the insects could soon arrive there.

India's Locust Warning Organization has said at least 10 swarms of up to 80 million locusts have made their way through India, destroying crops.

The organization said locust infestation is the worst the country has ever seen, coming before their usual migration from Pakistan between July and October and extending far beyond Rajasthan, where they have historically been centralized

Experts say that extreme heat in the nation, which has reached highs of 122 degrees, has contributed to the uncommonly large swarm.

"The outbreak started after warm waters in the western Indian Ocean in late 2019 fueled heavy amounts of rains over east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula," Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll, a senior scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said. "These warm waters were caused by the phenomenon called the Indian Ocean Dipole -- with warmer than usual waters to its west and cooler waters to its east. Rising temperatures due to global warming amplified the dipole and made the western Indian Ocean particularly warm."

The swarms have destroyed about 123,500 acres of cropland in the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh state.

States, including Jaipur, have deployed drones to spray locusts in order to clear the areas of locusts.

"It has successfully contained the movement of locusts in an open area and on the foothills where it was not possible for the usual tractors to make it reach. A detailed assessment of its impact is being studied by the field officers," said Om Prakash, commissioner of the Jaipur state agriculture department.

The drones are attached with spray tanks that can disperse chemicals for 10 minutes before being refilled by a handler.


"The biggest advantage of the drone is that it can fly above the flying zone of the locusts giving the flexibility to the officials to carry out combat operation while they are flying. Earlier, the operations were restricted to when they are resting n a tree or on a crop," Prakesh said


SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/india-wilts-under-heatwave-as.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/data-analysis-how-east-africa-is.html


https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/covid-19-locusts-and-floods-east.html