Swarms of locusts are invading East Africa and are now spotted in China

[Amandine]

Is the end nigh? It's enough to know that it's Trump's finger which might one day be on the (metaphorical) nuclear button, that Putin's declaring himself Supreme Leader (aka dictator), that we have this new coronavirus plague coming from China, that consequently we could be heading for a global economic recession, that there is an ever-present looming threat of a nuclear war (India/Pakistan), that we have an area about the size of South Korea that has been consumed by fires in Australia, and now a plague of locusts in Africa. What else is on its way? A comet cutting through the atmosphere headed for Earth? Doomsmongering aside, but wtf it's kinda starting to feel like it's the beginning of the end of the world. What is all this, God? Whose crazy perverse hallucination is this? I don't get it.

 

Locusts in Africa are not unknown by any means. But the scale and increase of this thing is unusual. And it seems the plague is now spreading far beyond Africa across the Middle East. Some have now even actually been spotted in China.

 

 

One swarm is estimated to contain billions of locusts and is big enough to cover Greater London.

A swarm can eat enough food in one day to feed 34 million people. 

Somalia and Ethiopia is in a state of emergency and Kenya (and now Uganda, Tanzania, and Sudan) are seeing the worst invasion in 70 years, the region is struggling to contain the infestation.

Millions of people there already struggle to obtain healthy food, and that's without the locusts.

It's spreading fast, the farmers can't fight them because their numbers are huge and propagation uncontrollable.

OMG. What a freaking nightmare. The images are horrifying.

 

To add to that, the conditions in which the locusts are thriving have also produced huge swarms of biting flies in Kenya. 

Since the start of 2020, 60 donkeys have died after being bitten by bloodsucking flies leaving gaping wounds that became infected. 

Farmers are covering their donkeys in human clothes to protect them from the flies.

 

The only way to sufficiently control the swarms is with pesticides. 

About $54 million is needed to step up aerial pesticide spraying, the only effective way to combat them, the UN says.

At present Kenya only has five planes to combat swarms the size of 250 football fields.

The UN is calling for $76 million in aid. So far it's only reached $20 million, and half of that came from an emergency fund. 

 

Time is running out. Planting season starts around April, and the UN worries a new generation of locusts will emerge around the same time.

At the very least, officials are urging the world to step in and help.

Dominique Burgeon, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN: "Now it's time for the international community to understand that it's an issue that needs to be dealt with now. Otherwise there will be high levels of acute food insecurity. There will be millions more people that will require food assistance and it will take us years to control the situation."

25.5 million people (half of them children) in that region alone are already suffering from severe food insecurity (hunger and malnutrition).

 

The problem is that after all the aerial pesticide spraying (also seeping into the ground afterwards) could the biggest threat to these farmers be air pollution and soil pollution? Could these end up being the biggest killers? 

 

Script:

They're so frightening they're mentioned in the scriptures as divine punishment.

Locusts have been harbingers of doom from time immemorial.

Notorious they may be but this is exceptional.

It's 70 years since Kenya witnessed these sights and sounds sounds.

A proliferation that began in Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter now stretches 3,500 miles from there across much of East Africa.

These desert locusts are among the world's great survivors.

Normally they live in the hottest driest places on earth but their hardiness stands them in good stead.

When the going gets good and in perfect conditions like these they prosper and their numbers simply explode.

Rain is the reason a series of cyclones coming off the Indian Ocean have kept this region unseasonably lush.

Crops and pastures used by livestock have been devoured by ravenous swarms.

Each and every one of them can eat its own bodyweight each and every day.

Mama Torito is a farmer and a mother and three weeks ago she watched locusts eat the flowers on her mango trees

No flowers, no mangoes.  She fears she has lost half of this year's harvest.

She told me she depended on selling her mangos to clothe her two children and to pay for their schooling.

The same swarm consumed all the sweet potato plants that Gladys Lemerry was cultivating here.

She said they tried to scare the locusts away but that for two days they kept on coming back.

We watched other farmers attempting the same thing but their ability to influence the movements of the swarms appeared limited at best.

The Kenyan government has been trying to defeat the invasion with pesticides but there's not enough spraying happening. 

Now here in this country's breadbasket they fear the next generation is just about to hatch with devastating consequences. 

"We are getting worried, we are thinking that it might even get out of hand and cause more harm on people's livelihoods and food insecurity for the community". 

Locusts live for about ten weeks and each new generation can be twenty times the size of the previous one.

The alarm might just have been sounded too late here. 

 

https://www.worldvision.org/hunger-news-stories/africa-hunger-famine-facts

In Africa, hunger is increasing at an alarming rate. Poverty, drought, extreme weather and environmental degradation due to overgrazing, deforestation, and other types of environmental damages are reversing years of progress so that 237 million sub-Saharan Africans are chronically undernourished, more than in any other region. In the whole of Africa, 257 million people are experiencing hunger, which is 20 percent of the population. That's a hell of a lot of people, including children and babies, suffering.

 

Are we going to actually have another famine? In 2020?! 

Despite the amount of wealth there is in the world, despite all our advances in sciences, technology, knowledge, .... we humans have got to get our act together.

No individual should die from starvation today, and no individual should have inordinate wealth. The world produces enough food to feed everyone. How come over 9 million people still die of starvation each year? How come 1% of people own half the world's wealth? How come 30% of People in the world are obese or overweight? And 795 million people in the world (that's like one in nine people on earth) do not have enough food? How come more than 30% of the food produced around the world is never consumed? And so much still wasted? If this is all someone's hallucination, he's got one hell of a fucking imagination.

 

 

A warm dry wind is all that breaks the silence,
The highways quiet scars across the land.
People lie, eyes closed, no longer dreaming,
The earth dies screaming.
Your country needs you, lets strike up the band.
The earth dies screaming
Despite all odds we must defend our land.
Like scattered pebbles, cars lie silent waiting
Oil-less engines seized by dirt and sand
Bodies hanging limp, no longer bleeding
The earth dies screaming.
Your country needs you, lets strike up the band.
The earth dies screaming
Despite all odds we must defend our land.
Half eaten meals lie rotting on the tables,
Money clutched within a bony hand.
Shutters down, the banks are not receiving,
The earth dies screaming.

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by Amandine

[Vladz0r]

It's over, the rest of the 10 plagues are imminent.
Seriously though, those locusts are extremely creepy. I hope someone can step up with the UN aid. 
 

Fear not, though, we have ducks!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/army-of-100000-chinese-ducks-on-standby-to-combat-locust-swarms/ar-BB10s7K0?li=BBnbfcL

The UN is saying it could increase 400-fold, so this sounds legitimately alarming...
Good thing the Chinese are helping. The UN is kind of notoriously incompetent. Hopefully it's an exaggeration and worst case scenario, anyway.

Edited February 28, 2020 by Vladz0r

[Leo Gura]

We had swarms of locusts in Vegas last year so big they could be seen by weather radar.

A big rainy winter causes them.

[Preety_India]

I have never seen them in real life just heard about them in other countries. 

Hope they don't come here. Sounds like a nightmare. 

I have read in biblical references that they eat everything causing starvation and famine and massive losses. 

Looks like the Bible was right when it said locusts are a curse. 

Hell hath no fury as a bunch of hungry locusts! 

Pray. 

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by Preety_India

[remember]

first thing i thought was: how sad not many people like them as food. because if people would like them, it would be profitable to put up really big nets and develop some kind of lokust hunting method maybe with help of scents or sounds guiding them into the nets. and there would be at least a small positive part about all of it. but because not many people like to eat them these technologies are not developed.

but somehow i think of big nets when i see the videos about them.

Edited February 28, 2020 by remember

[wk197]

We already have the corona virus to worry about oh god please no, africa also has huge black wasps that are apparently harmless. locusts are nasty bloodsuckers, though I've never encountered one in africa. 

what are the chances this could come to europe?

[Raptorsin7]

@wk197 Have you ever read about the bubonic plague? There's a story of a doctor, i don't remember his name, he was treating people and he got the plague but he lived. There's a reason why some people live through this stuff and never get sick, and some people whither and die. You can be one of the people who doesn't fear the plague because you know it can't touch you.

I have 0 fear of the virus. Fuck the virus. If i get infected I will fucking live through it. You can have this same confidence and ability.