Crop-Killing Locust Swarms Spotted Across Three Continents

Swarms of desert locusts are descending ravenously around the world. In the horn of Africa, they’re roving through croplands and flattening farms in a devastating barrage, reports Ryan Thompson at Euronews. Experts say the event is an unprecedented threat to the region’s food security.

Swarms eat everything in their path, destroying entire fields of crops, and planters can do little but watch with horror and dismay. Since the start of the year, locust swarms have also been spotted in India, Yemen, and Argentina and they’re now threatening to spill over to Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil.

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The tiny creatures reproduce rapidly and once airborne, they are much harder to contain: swarms of locusts can travel 200 kilometres a day. Keith Cressman, the senior locust forecasting officer at the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization, told Euronews that “extremely good weather conditions” have allowed the creatures to breed and multiply very rapidly.

Last month, Brazil’s agriculture declared a crop emergency in two southern states amid the possibility that a cloud of locusts could enter the country.

Continue reading at Euronews.

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