Shortages of planes and pesticide hamper locust control

Shortages of crop-dusting planes and pesticide are continuing to hamper locust control operations in West Africa, where new swarms of young insects are forming in southern Mauritania, northern Senegal and parts of Niger, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in its latest update on the crisis. "Although control operations have increased, there are serious shortages of pesticide and aircraft in many countries," it said in a statement published on Thursday. The FAO said desert locusts, which are ravaging crops and pasture across a broad swathe of the semi-arid Sahel region from Senegal to Chad, were continuing to breed in the region. However, it said some swarms had recently started moving northwards across the Sahara desert towards the Western Sahara, Morocco and Algeria. "In the last few days, swarms moved northwards in Mauritania, reaching Nouakchott and the Atar and Adrar regions in the northwest. Some locusts may also have reached the Western Sahara," the FAO said. "Summer breeding has extended into southern Algeria along the border with Mali, where early instar hoppers (young flightless larvae) are present," it added. The FAO predicted a mass movement of locusts across the Sahara next month as the rainy season in the Sahel comes to an end and the prevailing winds start to blow the swarms of insects northwards. "More swarms are expected to move into northwest Mauritania and the southern portion of Northwest Africa in the coming weeks," it said. However, Keith Cressman, a locust control officer with the FAO in Rome, warned there was also a strong risk that over the next two months new swarms could also drift west from the Mali-Mauritania frontier area into Senegal and then south into Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and northern Guinea. He told IRIN that such a movement could devastate Senegal's main grain growing region, in the south of the country, which has so far escaped locust infestation. "I think Senegal could have quite a difficult time ahead," Cressman warned. "In the next couple of months you will still have swarm production in the Sahel east of Senegal and there's a chance that some of those could move west into Senegal and then south until the end of this year." The FAO said crop damage was continuing to be reported across the Sahel, and in some instances bands of flightless locust larvae known as hoppers had invaded people's houses as well as their crops. The regions worst affected by locusts so far are southern Mauritania, northern and central Senegal and western Mali. However, the FAO said hopper bands were present in northern Burkina Faso and new locust swarms were still forming in parts of Niger. Smaller infestations had been detected in central and eastern Chad, it added. Cressman said the FAO estimated that between three and four million hectares of land in the Sahel were currently infested with locusts. Earlier this week, the FAO sent a special team to the Senegalese capital Dakar to help coordinate international aid efforts to control the locust crisis. This is headed by Daniele Donati, the FAO emergency coordinator for Africa, who is normally based in Nairobi, Kenya. Cressman said the FAO would send a crop assessment mission to the Sahel in early October and hoped to have a detailed picture of harvest losses caused by locusts by the end of the month. Grain harvesting will take place across the Sahel in October and November. Agriculture Ministry officials in Mali have already warned the United Nations that they expect about one million tonnes - a third of this year's expected harvest - to be destroyed by locusts. Locusts weigh only two grammes, but are capable of eating their own weight of food in a day. Cressman said 69 percent of all crop damage is caused by immature adult locusts during the first three weeks after they grow wings and start to fly.