Gregarious locusts like to party!

Imagine spotting a desert locust. This guy lives by himself and minds his own business. One day, the weather was nice and moist with apt precipitation and the solitary soul of this locust was on search for food. Behind a lavish cactus, he spots two female friends. Then one thing lead to another and they ended up partying all night. What happened next is history. Well, experts believe that it takes only three locusts to start a plague.

Desert locusts, one of the most devastating migratory pests in the world, change themselves completely after socialising. Young, ambitious locusts set on a flight to travel the world and go wherever the wind takes them. They like to savour everything green. And mind you, they make the biggest swarms of the insects on the Earth!

Picture: UN FAO

Answering Al Jazeera’s Adrian Finighan’s question on how do locusts swarm, Stephen Njoka, Director of the Desert Locust Control Organization for Eastern Africa replies, “Normally, locusts are solitary. But when a single locust gets together with others, it becomes gregarious. And, once they become gregarious, they start swarming and move about in large numbers.”

So, what happened is frequent cyclones and frequent rains created the moist conditions that are fit for their breeding. Swarms from the Horn of Africa started moving towards Iran and Pakistan and have now entered India well before their usual arrival time, which is around July.

At a time when the world is trying to fight a pandemic, they have covered a large portion of Africa and South Asia. For India, the infestation is worst in 26 years. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the locusts can fly up to 150 km a day and a 1 sq. km. swarm (with about 80 million adults) can eat as much food as 35,000 people in a single day!  

According to the Agriculture Ministry, the worst of locust menace is yet to come. The locusts will start laying eggs on the onset of monsoon and continue breeding for two more months. And the birth of new locusts will coincide with the growth phase of the Kharif crop. That would be a major problem then.

The swarms of locusts have pushed many African countries on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. Some of these countries like Somalia and Ethiopia are dealing with fragile food security situation, which becomes a threat to the livelihood of millions of people in these countries.

Now the question that arises here is that could all this have been averted? Here, in India, to keep a check on desert locust, we have Locust Warning Organisation (LWO). This organisation is apparently the oldest monitoring system in any locust-affected country in the world. It was established in 1939 and its headquarters were then in Karachi (now in Jodhpur and Faridabad). In summer, a monthly meeting is held between India and Pakistan to exchange information on the pests and coordinate on the ways to control them. While the lack of funds and inadequate monitoring measures have been a problem for many years, with lockdown in place, even those measures took a backseat. Also, this time, the swarms are massive so it is unlikely that they could have been prepared for this.

So now, people across East Africa and South Asia are trying different ways to deal with them. In India, since locusts are sensitive to noise, people are banging utensils, playing loud music to have a mini party in an effort to stop locusts’ party, and bursting firecrackers (something people here like to do no matter what the occasion is).

China has sent ‘duck troops’ to fight the infestation. One duck is capable of eating around 200 locusts. British India was also of the view that protecting birds that can eat locusts could be a good preventive strategy. And Iran is mulling over using the military to fight the locust menace.

One solution that all the governments are counting on is pesticides and disinfectants. Some have deployed people to spray these and others are using aircraft. But these have their effects on the livestock that eventually goes on grazing the fields and if the crop is saved, then it’s going into our stomachs, too.

There is another solution but that is likely to give you creeps: In many cultures in Africa and Asia, insects are considered an edible source of proteins. Just saying, if you can’t beat them, eat them!

©2020 The Delphic Sagacity