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Biblical Plague Thrashes Africa |
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By Julio Godoy*
Millions
of locusts are devouring vegetables, grains and even clothing in
nine African countries. The United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization fears that the plague -- the worst in 15 years -- will
extend even farther.
PARIS - A plague of desert locusts (Schistocerca
gregaria), which for the past year has been devastating crops in
the countries of the Sahel in West Africa, is expected to worsen
in the coming weeks if international aid does not arrive to help
stop it, say experts with the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO).
If the insect's reproductive cycle is not interrupted in October,
the locusts will wipe out the grains and vegetables grown in the
Sahel and ''the infestation could spread to even more countries
in Africa, threatening food security in a wide area,'' said FAO
director, Jacques Diouf.
This locust plague is the worst in 15 years and was triggered by
abundant rains from June to August 2003 over much of the Sahel,
the transition zone between the Sahara Desert and the more fertile
lands that lie to the south on the African continent.
Humidity, high temperatures and wind created ideal conditions for
the devastating locusts to multiply.
From October 2003 to August 2004, the clouds of insects spread through
Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal (in the Sahel) and through
Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia in North Africa. New reports
from FAO are raising fears that the locusts will reach northeast
Nigeria and even Sudan.
Over the past year the plague has destroyed around seven million
hectares of farmland -- two million in Algeria alone.
The density of insects has reached more than 100 per cubic meter,
and their biological cycle was accelerated by rains in the Sahel
and adjacent areas since early May.
Normally, the Schistocerca gregaria, despite its name, is a solitary
insect. But when its population increases dramatically, it alters
its behavior and moves in large groups to devour vegetables, grains
and even the clothing and ''jaimas'', the typical tents of the nomads.
The lines of trees that constitute the ''green belt'' of the Sahel
and protect its central plateau from desertification were almost
completely destroyed by the locusts, an unprecedented occurrence.
In just one day, a ton of locusts can consume just as much as 10
elephants or 2,500 people, according to FAO.
Locust reports coming from southern Europe, and especially from
Spain, prompted fears in the northern hemisphere spring and summer
that the plague had reached the northern shores of the Mediterranean
Sea.
Farmers in Catalonia, in northeast Spain, and in Castilla y León,
in central Spain, reported in June and July that clouds of locusts
had destroyed their crops.
Regional governments, aware of the plague in the Sahel, reacted
with insecticide fumigation campaigns, using highly toxic chemicals
that apparently destroyed beehives and other harmless insects.
Keith Cressman, head of the FAO's desert locust prevention efforts,
told Tierramérica that the locusts reported in Spain and Italy are
of different local species, unrelated to those of the African plague.
''So far, there is no reason to fear that the desert locust will
reach southern Europe,'' Cressman said.
The Sahel's locust plagues of past decades have rarely crossed the
Mediterranean, as occurred in 1956, when they reached the western
Spanish region of Extremadura, bordering Portugal.
In July of this year, apparently afraid that the locusts of North
Africa would spread to Spain, Madrid sent fumigation aircraft to
fight the plague in Morocco.
Juan Peña, head of Spain's campaign against the locust, defended
the fumigation effort, saying, ''it is much easier to control the
plague in the desert.''
But FAO experts say that only ''extraordinary winds'' from the Sahel
towards the north could carry the plague to Europe.
The U.N. agency estimates the anti-locust campaign will cost around
100 million dollars, and Diouf appealed to international donors
to pitch in. To date just 37 million dollars has been pledged, including
contributions channeled through the FAO and bilateral donations.
The FAO has re-established an emergency operations center to work
directly with donors, the countries threatened by the locust plague,
and organizations capable of providing technical help towards a
solution.
In North Africa, particularly Algeria and Morocco, large-scale fumigation
operations helped stop the advance of the locusts June through August,
but the invasion of insects is intensifying in West Africa.
The damages caused by the plague could be multiplied by the widespread
use of highly toxic insecticides, which has led the FAO to try an
organic pesticide based on metarhizium fungus, which kills the locust
in a period of three to four weeks.
But the main concern is to prevent the wave of locusts from developing
so much that it would be impossible to stop it. The last major onslaught
of the Schistocerca gregaria lasted from 1986 to 1989 and attacked
40 countries.
* Julio Godoy is an IPS correspondent.
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