'Unprecedented' and 'Devastating' locust swarms, UN asks for help..

[Hobie]

This is a interesting development...

"The UN has called for international help to fight huge swarms of desert locusts sweeping through east Africa.

A spokesman for the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), called for aid to "avert any threats to food security, livelihoods, malnutrition".

Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are all struggling with "unprecedented" and "devastating" swarms of the food-devouring insects, the FAO has said.

The agency fears locust numbers could grow 500 times by June.

Ethiopia and Somalia have not faced an infestation on this scale for 25 years, while Kenya has not seen a locust threat this size for 70 years, the FAO said earlier this week. South Sudan and Uganda are also at risk if the swarms continue to grow and spread." Massive locust swarms spark UN appeal for help

"Swarms of locusts in east Africa have devastated crops and sent a passenger plane off course, and now the UN is warning that without international intervention the voracious insects threaten the food security of tens of millions of people." ‘Unprecedented’ Swarms of Locusts Are Devouring Crops and Slamming Into Planes in East Africa

 

[Hobie]

Looks like the locust have spread to the Middle East, as it has hit Iran..

"Iran afflicted by large swarms of desert locusts, amid coronavirus woes

'The density of locusts in the swarms is so high that a 10 to 15-centimeter layer of dead locusts forms on the ground after spraying pesticides.'..

Iran afflicted by large swarms of desert locusts, amid coronavirus woes

 

[Hobie]

This thing has reached all the way to Pakistan...

"PAHAR, PAKISTAN – Pakistan’s farmers are struggling to combat the worst locust plague in nearly three decades as insect swarms decimate entire harvests in the country’s agricultural heartlands and send food prices soaring.

Heavy rains and cyclones sparked “unprecedented” breeding and the explosive growth of locust populations on the Arabian peninsula early last year, according to the United Nations.

The insects have since fanned out and wreaked havoc on farms from East Africa to India before making their way into Pakistan from the desert on the country’s southwestern border with Iran.

The crisis is so severe that the government has declared a nationwide emergency and urgently appealed for help from the international community."....https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/06/asia-pacific/pakistan-locust-plague/#.XmSglXJKi1s

 

[Prayer Warrior]

This sounds bad. I'll keep these people in my prayers!

 

[Hobie]

This was interesting...
"So There’s a Locust Plague Too?
It’d be easy to quip biblically about the simultaneous breakout of pandemic and plague if not for the vast human toll that the intercontinental crises are exacting. As the coronavirus continues to spread on six continents, a desert locust outbreak has inundated East Africa with hundreds of billions of bugs, causing food shortages in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. “It was like an umbrella had covered the sky,” Joseph Katone Leparole, a 68-year-old living in central Kenya, told the New York Times.

In our age of overlapping crises, it shouldn’t be a surprise that climate change can be identified as a factor in the upsurge, the technical term used for such a natural disaster that is just below plague."...So There’s a Locust Plague Too?

 

[Hobie]

And now today..

Science News

New, larger wave of locusts threatens millions in Africa

Billions of the young desert locusts are winging in from breeding grounds in Somalia in search of fresh vegetation springing up with seasonal rains.

April 10, 2020, 12:41 PM EDT
By Associated Press

Weeks before the coronavirus spread through much of the world, parts of Africa were already threatened by another kind of plague, the biggest locust outbreak some countries had seen in 70 years.

Now the second wave of the voracious insects, some 20 times the size of the first, is arriving. Billions of the young desert locusts are winging in from breeding grounds in Somalia in search of fresh vegetation springing up with seasonal rains.

Millions of already vulnerable people are at risk. And as they gather to try to combat the locusts, often in vain, they risk spreading the virus — a topic that comes a distant second for many in rural areas.

It is the locusts that “everyone is talking about,” said Yoweri Aboket, a farmer in Uganda. “Once they land in your garden they do total destruction. Some people will even tell you that the locusts are more destructive than the coronavirus. There are even some who don’t believe that the virus will reach here.”...

New, larger wave of locusts threatens millions in Africa