Main crop growing areas have so far escaped locust infestation

Although swarms of locusts have infested large areas of northern and central Senegal, the main crop growing areas in the southwest of the country have so far escaped damage, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Tuesday. Since early July, locusts have been breeding in large numbers in northern Senegal, particularly along the Senegal river valley which forms the northern border with Mauritiania. They have also spread south along the coast as far as the capital Dakar and inland as far as the town of Diourbel and Fatick, 120 km to the east. However, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement that the main grain-growing areas around the towns of Kaolack and Tambacounda, to the east of Fatick, and Kolda and Ziguinchor, in the Casamance region between Gambia and the southern border with Guinea-Bissau, had so far escaped the scourge. Last year these four areas produced 84 percent of Senegal's groundnut crop, 80 percent of its millet, 96 percent of its maize and 92 percent of its sorghum, the ministry noted. President Abdoulaye Wade warned earlier this month that the locust invasion, the worst seen in West Africa for 15 years, could cause US$500 million of crop damage in Senegal. But given that the country's main crop growing regions were still untouched by the plague, the Ministry of Agriculture concluded that "There is still hope for a satisfactory outcome to the rainy season." The ministry reported fresh swarms of young pink-coloured locusts appearing in the Senegal river valley, where they were drifting between Senegal and Mauritania. It also reported large concentrations of hopper bands of flightless locust larvae in the far north of Senegal and along the coastal strip north of Dakar. By Monday, over 197,000 hectares of land had been treated with insecticide, it added. Although Oxfam reported this month that several farm animals had died from eating pasture contaminated with insecticide around the northern town of Matam, the Ministry of Agriculture said no such deaths had been officially reported. "The health situation of livestock in the Matam region is quite good and does not give cause for concern," it said. International agricultural experts say Senegal is doing more than most other West African countries to get to grips with the locust problem. However, the authorities in Dakar are worried that feeble control efforts in southern Mauritania will simply lead to more swarms drifting in over the northern border. Senegal, which has received the support of spraying teams and crop dusting planes from Morocco, Algeria and Libya, therefore sent three of its own ground-based spraying teams to help out in southern Mauritania at the weekend.