Locusts threat in June to crops in India, Pak
UN agency says migratory pest destructive could hit livelihood
United Nations, May 22: The desert locust invasion, which poses a significant threat to the livelihoods and food security, is expected to move from East Africa to India and Pakistan next month and could be accompanied by other swarms, a top official of the UN’s food and agricultural agency has warned.
The desert locust is considered the most destructive migratory pest in the world and a single swarm covering one square kilometre can contain up to 80 million locusts.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO’s) Senior Locust Forecasting Officer Keith Cressman said: “Everybody knows we’re facing one of the worst desert locust situations that we’ve probably had in a number of decades”. “It’s obviously being focused at the moment on East Africa, where it’s extremely vulnerable in terms of livelihoods and food security but now in the next month or so it will expand to other areas and will move (towards)…West Africa. “And it will move across the Indian Ocean to India and Pakistan,” Cressman said during a virtual briefing on Thursday on the FAO Desert Locust Appeal amid the new threat to Southwest Asia and Africa’s Sahel region. Currently, the locust invasion is most serious in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, southern Iran and in parts of Pakistan and starting in June, it will move from Kenya to throughout Ethiopia, as well as to Sudan and perhaps West Africa. “The infestations in southern Iran, and in southwest Pakistan, they will move to India and Pakistan on the border areas. And those infestations in India and Pakistan could be supplemented by other swarms coming from East Africa, Northern Somalia,” he said.
On what the UN is doing to help these countries as they face the locust invasion, Cressman said the FAO is working with the nations to upscale and intensify their monitoring and control operations.
● THE DESERT locust is considered the most destructive migratory pest in the world and a single swarm covering one square kilometre can contain up to 80 million locusts.