Locusts swarm into Chad

2004-08-09 18:36

Rome - Vast swarms of locusts rampaging across Africa's northern Sahel region spread to Chad over the weekend, leading to fears that the voracious insects could soon begin ravaging crops in hunger-wracked Sudan, the United Nations food agency said on Monday.

"While Mauritania continues to be the worst hit, Mali and Niger are catching up and over the weekend we have seen the first swarm in Chad," said Dr Clive Elliott, senior officer in charge of the Locust Group at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Elliott said the swarm in Chad was detected north of Ati in the centre of the country, only 400km from the Sudan border.

The rapid spread of the swarms westwards across the Sahel region has caused scientists at the Rome-based organisation to revise their original forecast that the locust problem would reach plague proportions by the end of this year.

Farmers are pessimistic

They now believe the scientific definition of a plague - a simultaneous large scale infestation in two regions - could be applicable "within weeks" if the swarms spread to Sudan.

"If they established across Sudan they can then cross the Red Sea into the Arabian Peninsula and then to Iran, Pakistan and India - which is quite a vast area," Elliott said.

Authorities in Mauritania are meanwhile battling to contain an invasion of locusts saying that some one million hectares had been infested nationwide by the dreaded clouds of insects.

"In Mauritania, at the equivalent point of the year, they are seeing more locusts than in 1988, the peak year of the last plague," Elliott said.

"Some farmers are so pessimistic about what they are seeing that they don't even think its worth planting again."

"The first swarms that arrived in Mauritania laid eggs and these are hatching out now."

FAO says that the summer season will be critical in determining how the locust upsurge develops. "

"It depends on the rains. If there are heavy rains there could be two more generations this summer, each generation producing 20 times more locusts than the one before," warned Elliott.

Things would be even worse but for an extensive operation to control the locusts using pesticides carried out in North West Africa.

"The ones that didn't get controlled are now moving south into the Sahel. We are making a tremendous effort to get donor support and the message is beginning to get through now that this is a very serious problem," the FAO scientist said.

But he said the countries in the path of the swarms have "quite small resources."

"We have been talking of the need to get prepared for months and months, but nobody knows what the scale of the problem was going to be and we are beginning to see that now."

- SAPA