Since late 2019, East Africa and the Middle East have experienced their worst locust outbreaks in decades.
A small swarm of locusts can eat more food than 35,000 people. But some swarms in the area have grown to more than 2,000 times that size. Billions of insects have swarmed so thick that planes have been forced to drift off course. Some areas in Ethiopia have reported a loss of almost 100 percent in vital crops. And controlling locusts has been especially difficult along with the Covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions in place to combat it.
What made this year so bad? The weather. The desert locust thrives when the dry weather gets wet. And in 2018 and 2019, a series of bizarre weather events brought record rainfall to the Middle East and East Africa.
For more information, watch the video above and read our detailed article by Umair Irfan.
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