Countries in northwest Africa are hoping cooler winter weather will give them the time they need to wipe out swarms of young locusts while they are still too immature to breed, delegates at a Rome conference said.
The locusts are a new generation, the offspring of the wave that devastated African crops and grazing land this summer. Experts say this winter provides a months-long window of opportunity to hunt them down and spray them with insecticide before temperatures warm up and rains hit.
Locusts need warm weather and green vegetation to mature, and moist soil to lay eggs.
At an annual meeting of the council of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, delegates from across northwest Africa described efforts to break the breeding cycle, while urging more funding and stronger cooperation in a crisis with no boundaries.
”The action must be carried out across all regions, all countries,” said Aomar Ait Amer Meziane, director of studies at Algeria’s Agriculture Ministry.
”If that’s not the case, all our efforts will be limited.”
The crackdown is especially important in northern Mauritania, where locusts could reproduce even in winter because of rain and warm temperatures. The country could be ”a source of swarms that invade the rest of the countries of the region,” the Arab Maghreb Union of north African countries said in a statement.
Smaller numbers of young locusts have flown as far away as Egypt and Israel.
However, the swarms are concentrated now in Algeria and Morocco, where rains aren’t expected until March.
”This is a fantastic opportunity to reduce locust numbers down to non-threatening levels,” said Keith Cressman, FAO’s locust forecasting officer. Locusts are trapped there along the foothills of the Atlas Mountains.
Teams in northwest Africa have been hunting the swarms of young locusts –called ”hopper bands” — since they began arriving weeks ago. Locusts can travel up to 200km in a day, and it’s easy to lose track of them, especially over desolate terrain or sand dunes, said Clive Elliott, a senior officer with FAO’s locust group.
”It’s one of those situations where … maybe you’re doing an excellent job, but it’s hard to know what you’re missing,” he said.
The main tactic is to track the locusts until they settle down for the night, then spray them in the morning, he said. Once locusts reproduce, there is no effective way of killing the eggs, which are buried below ground.
Summer breeding in the Sahel nations of West Africa has given rise to the waves of young locusts.
The Rome-based agency has received $55,6-million in cash out of a target of $100-million for its locust programme. It contributed $6-million of its own money. About $11,5-million has been pledged but not yet paid.
Locusts are present every year in Africa, but unseasonable rains last year prompted a larger-than-normal hatch and led to the heaviest locust infestation since 1988. The insects eat their weight in crops every day, and group together in swarms dozens of kilometres long. – Sapa-AP