From pandemic to pestilence: Potential for disasterthrough locust attack huge

While the world is struggling to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed 1,684,833 confirmed cases to-date with a death toll of 102,136, the UN also warns of the threat of locust attacks. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) observes that swarms of desert locusts have devastated crops in East Africa, hit the Middle East and moved into South Asia. They’re breeding rapidly because of changes in global climate patterns that have brought about major cyclones and heavy rains, and they are feeding off human food supplies across continents. A square mile of a swarm can be formed by up to 210 million locusts, which can eat as much food as 90,000 people in a day.

This scribe had warned of the threat in the article titled ‘Controlling locust attacks’, which appeared on 10 March 2020 in The News. Unfortunately, because of our preoccupation with combating COVID-19, we ignore the threat to our peril.

The swarms appear in the Old Testament, most notably in Exodus as one of the plagues Moses calls down on Egypt, which also is referenced in the Quran (7:133). In the New Testament, locusts are associated with Revelation (9:3), where they emerge in ferocious swarms that also have the sting of scorpions. Aerial spray of pesticide may help to some extent. Farmers attempt to chase the bugs off, drumbeating or rigging contraptions that make loud noises. These methods have not made a dent in the vast multitude of locusts.

The FAO calls locusts the “most dangerous migratory pest.” They are highly mobile, able to travel up to 90 miles a day if wind conditions are in their favor and wreak havoc along the way. Female locusts can lay up to 300 eggs within their life span of three to five months. As many as 1,000 egg pods, each holding up to 80 eggs, can incubate underground within a square meter (10.7 square feet). In the past, desert locusts have been a key factor that aggravated famines in Ethiopia. And in 1915, they stripped Ottoman-era Palestine of nearly all vegetation.

In 1937, aboard slowly moving trains, the US Army National Guard used flamethrowers in an attempt to quell a relentless plague of locusts crossing through Colorado. But the flamethrowers failed. And so did explosives. The locusts easily endured, devouring farmland.

Nowadays, desert locusts are still hard to control, chiefly because they tend to breed and thrive in large swathes of remote land, making it difficult for authorities to tackle the problem before it emerges. The countries that are most severely affected also tend to have weaker infrastructure, making them slower to move the necessary supplies and information to parties that need them. In Pakistan, where the population already faces food insecurity and is reeling under the impact of lockdown owing to the threat of COVID-19, will be hard hit by locust swarms.

The Middle Eastern nations’ pest control operations failed to cull the locusts, so beds of eggs which hatched in mid-March, releasing new hungry bugs, are posed to strike now. In the first two weeks of this year, fields in Pakistan and India came under attack too, the swarms intensifying day after day. What makes the current surge of locusts stand out is not only their numbers and intensity, but also that they are active in the Subcontinent during winter months. In the past, swarms typically would dissipate by October. Now it’s April, and they are still going strong.

In my previous Op-Ed on the topic mentioned above, I had sanguinely talked of “duck troops” amassing at the Sino-Pak border ready to gobble up the locusts. Unfortunately, my positivity was misplaced. It has now come to light that the species of locust that is on the country’s doorstep emits phenyl acetonitrile, a foul-smelling secretion that is meant to deter predators. Birds typically do not seek them out as a food source.

FAO specialists predict that 200,000 square kilometers of farmland will be blanketed by locusts in June/July during the onset of monsoon season — when conditions are perfect for ravenous insects to breed.

So, what is the solution? Today, the best humanity can do is try and predict where the swarms will form before a massive population outbreak can occur and ultimately consume vast tracts of crops, which are often rural people’s sustenance. Once locusts grow wings as mature adults, there’s no turning back.

After an outbreak occurs or the swarming begins, the blunt strategy is often to drop millions of liters of chemical pesticides on the insects, which is bad for the environment and human health. But identifying exactly where the locusts start to swarm can be enormously daunting, especially when it comes to desert locusts in the Sub-continent, the creatures usually live solitary lives, but, when the right environmental conditions align (like after a good rainy season), the creatures become intensely attracted to each other, change color, and often grow longer wings and become more muscular. They transform into a formidable swarm.

COVID-19 may yet have a silver lining. As food sources diminish, locusts, which are highly cannibalistic, they will turn on each other. However, we have to be vigilant to predict the onslaught of locusts. Allusions to the Apocalypse aside, the real-life potential for disaster is huge.