Hundreds of billions of locusts are swarming through parts of East Africa and South Asia in the worst infestation for a quarter of a century – East Africa’s Fight against Desert Locust Swarms
East Africa is once again threatened by the Desert Locust Swarms and the plague will be 10 times worse than the plaque that descended two months ago.
Locusts swarms present an alarming threat to food security and livelihoods.
A swarm the one third of a squared mile can consume the same amount of food in one day as 30 000 people.
The moment they arrive in a place the first thing they do is eat anything green. They have destroyed some fields of crops and vegetation in a matter of days.
The Last Big Locust Plague in South Africa
For the past three years an organised effort has been made by the Governments of the South African colonies to destroy the swarms of locusts that from time to time invade the cultivated districts and ravage the crops.
South Africa’s Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries confirmed the outbreak of brown locusts in a newsletter published on its website around February 2020. The outbreak isn’t linked to an unprecedented invasion of desert locusts in East Africa, it said
The Locust Invasion of Zululand 1933-1937
But in the 1930s the region was once again faced with the locust scourge. This invasion from the end of 1933 to 1937 was one of the worst on record and coming as it did so soon after the economic hardships of the Great Depression, its effects on the inhabitants of Zululand were extremely severe.
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East Africa’s Fight against Desert Locust Swarms
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