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Ethiopian officials have deployed helicopters to spray new swarms of desert locusts that are eating crops and threatening the country’s food security.
The United States Agency for International Development said billions of pests have descended on East Africa in recent weeks, targeting crops and pastures in a region that already faces widespread humanitarian and famine needs.
In the latest development, huge swarms swept across Ethiopia’s southern Oromia region last week from Kenya and Somalia, displacing thousands of people, authorities said.
Ethiopia tackled the swarms by spraying pesticides from the air, using three leased helicopters from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), said Zebdios Salato, the chief adviser to the crop protection department of the Ministry of Agriculture from Ethiopia.
Hours after spraying, millions of locusts lay strewn on the ground, dead or dying.
Salato told VOA’s Horn of Africa Service that the helicopters arrived the first week of May from South Africa. He said Etopia could lease three more if necessary.
“Total eradication will not be possible, but we can expand the control operation,” he said.
Previously, the government was using five single-engine turboprop aircraft to repeal the lobster outbreak in remote and inaccessible areas.
Salato said that with funds from various donors, Ethiopia hopes to limit damage to crops and avoid a food crisis. The county experienced a similar desert locust invasion in 2019 and lost about 1.14 percent of the total harvest, Tamiru Kebede, an agriculture ministry official, told VOA. “This is less than we expected,” he said.
But in some cases, aerial spraying is not enough. Huge city-sized locust swarms forced more than 15,000 people to flee their homes this month in the Wachile region, another agriculture official, Mohamed Abaqoda said.
These are immature, wingless locusts that move by jumping, Abaqoda said. “They feed on every green leaf, flooded lakes, houses, anywhere and have displaced more than 12 villages in the area,” he said.
“Thousands of inflatable insects invaded our village and forced us to flee,” said Bule Dida, 56, the father of five children.
The community tried to scare them by hitting cans and pans, blowing whistles, and honking motorcycle horns. Experts sprayed pesticides on the vehicles, but the total effort on the ground was not enough to stop the pests, Bule said.
Locusts have already destroyed large swaths of food and pasture in the region, but the total damage cannot be determined as new swarms continually enter, Abaqoda said.
Ethiopia is aerially spraying the swarms at three locations: Arba-Minchi in southern Ethiopia; Jigjiga, in the Somali region and Dire-Dawa, in the eastern part of the country.
Senior pathologist Heru Hussein said Ethiopia is using malathion, diazinene and other green pesticides. However, in some areas aerosols are not allowed as they can affect vegetation and plant life.
Experts have described the current desert locust infestation in the Horn as the worst in 25 years. Salato said widespread rains in late March created an ideal environment for lobster farming. The situation can worsen when insects mature and grow wings. The desert locust can fly up to 19 kilometers per hour and cover up to 130 kilometers per day.
Salato expects new swarm formation to peak during the wet season of June and July, “but we are working to adequately control them at an early stage,” he said.
FAO warns that from July, new swarms from Saudi Arabia could also cross the Red Sea and reach the interior of Sudan, where they could reproduce and threaten vital crops and grasslands.
The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated efforts to combat locusts, mainly by delaying deliveries of pesticides and personal protective equipment in recent weeks, FAO says.
