SWARMS OF LOCUSTS COULD INCREASE FAMINE THREAT FOR MILLIONS IN TIGRAY
UN warning that insects could destroy crops in Ethiopian war zone
Swarms of locusts in northern Ethiopia threaten to worsen a severe shortage of food in the Tigray region.
Almost a million people in the region are already at risk of starvation after a year of civil war.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said the cropdestroying insects could increase the threat of famine.
Locusts were first spotted in mid-September in the north-eastern Afar region and are likely to have spread to neighbouring Tigray and Amhara, a UN report said.
“We are extremely concerned about the possible impacts of desert locusts on northern Ethiopia’s upcoming cereal harvest season,” UN worker Cyril Ferrand said.
“People in the region can ill afford to lose one grain of the already reduced harvest.”
The war is likely to hinder measures to combat the locust swarms in Tigray, where crops and food stocks have already been destroyed.
The US estimates that 900,000 people face famine. The World Peace Foundation reported between 50 and 100 hunger-related deaths a day in Tigray.
Aid agencies say Tigray needs more than 100 lorries of food aid daily. But only a fraction of that is reaching the region. The Ethiopian government is accused of blocking deliveries.
Ethiopia this month expelled seven UN aid officials for “meddling” in the country’s internal affairs.
Their expulsion came after UN aid chief Martin Griffiths urged the government to lift a three-month blockade on lorries entering Tigray.
On Friday, the UN said it was suspending all of its flights to the regional capital, Mekelle, after the government launched air strikes on a reported rebel target in the city as a plane carrying aid workers was preparing to land.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent the country’s military into Tigray, alongside allied troops from neighbouring Eritrea, in November 2020 after ambushes on federal army bases by Tigrayan forces.
The US and civilians in Tigray have accused Ethiopian and Eritrean troops of atrocities, including rape, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The violence has displaced more than two million people, leading to much of the region’s farmland being uncultivated.
“Our estimates indicate that around half of all arable land in Tigray went unplanted due to the security situation,” Mr Ferrand said. “The harvest could be 40 per cent below baseline.”
Debrom, 43, a farmer from La’ilay Maychew district, about 30 kilometres south of the Eritrean border, told The National he fled his village last December and was living in a camp for displaced Tigrayans in Sudan’s Al Qadarif region.
“I fled my land because soldiers were killing everyone they saw and didn’t differentiate between civilians and fighters,” he said.
“I got out alive, but Eritrean soldiers killed many of my friends and family who stayed behind.”
When asked how many farmers are likely to have remained in his village, he said: “If they
weren’t killed, they have probably joined [the Tigrayan rebels], or they might have made it here to Sudan like me.”
Ethiopia is still recovering from the locust swarms that ravaged crops in East Africa last year and left millions across the region needing food aid.
Mr Ferrand said the scale of locust breeding in Tigray this year was not clear as the conflict made it impossible to conduct exhaustive land surveys.
The new swarms could be more devastating than last year’s, said Emnet Negash, at Ghent University’s department of geography.
“It’s prior to becoming adults that locusts consume food the
most,” he said. “Much of last year’s swarms were hatched in Yemen and in remote areas of the Afar region, where crop production is not the main economic means. Most arrived in Ethiopia as adults, relatively past their feeding prime.
“The current swarms, however, are all being formed in Ethiopia, meaning that they will consume far more than last year’s swarms did.”
Mr Negash, who worked at the Tigray Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Development until 2018, said breeding locusts had been spotted in seven districts of Tigray at the worst possible time.
“Ahead of the maturation of
cereal crops in October, farmers resort to growing lean-season crops like maize and vegetables that can grow quickly and supplement their dishes during the food supply gap in September,” he said.
“This year, however, the conflict has caused a severe, noticeable dearth of corn crops. This has worsened this year’s hunger gap.
“Locust swarms will arrive when people are at their lowest point.”
Despite the gravity of the situation, there is little sign of urgency in Addis Ababa.
Last month, the deputy head of the National Disaster Risk Management Commission,
Aydrus Hassan, told state media outlets that no one in Ethiopia was at risk of starvation, echoing comments made by Mr Abiy in June.
The threat of US sanctions, mounting diplomatic pressure and criticism, including a stinging indictment of Mr Abiy’s actions by former UN aid chief Mark Lowcock, have so far not moved Ethiopian authorities to allow aid deliveries to Tigray.
Meanwhile, the civil war rages on, with government forces launching a new offensive last week to dislodge Tigrayan fighters from entrenched positions in the neighbouring Amhara region.