Main crop area so far spared by locusts

Locusts have inflicted extensive damage on crops and pasture in some parts of Mali, but the country's main crop-growing area in the inland delta of the river Niger has been spared, Fakaba Diakite, the coordinator of the government's locust control campaign, said. He told IRIN that the locust control campaign had successfully managed to prevent the swarms of insects from invading the country's most prolific agricultural areas to the south of the 14th parallel. This line of latitude runs stretches from Kayes in the west, through Mopti on the river Niger in central Mali, to the point where the Niger river flows southwards into the Republic of Niger in the east. Diakite said that in most areas of the country, locust numbers were now decreasing, although some swarms were continuing to drift into western Mali from Mauritania and there were still heavy concentrations of insects in the Adrar des Iforas and Timetrine hills of the desert northeast. President Amadou Toumani Toure has reiterated in his speeches during a recent tour of the country that Mali will not suffer famine during the coming year because its grain belt in areas of the Niger valley controlled by the Office du Niger irrigation authority has so far been saved. Fakite declined to quantify the expected crop damage from locust swarms, which have now begun migrating northwards towards their winter and spring breeding grounds in North Africa. But he said that during the month of September, locusts had inflicted heavy losses in some areas of the Kayes and Koulikoro regions of western Mali, around Segou and Mopti in the Niger valley, and in the Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal regions in the arid east of the country. "Whenever you get an invasion of desert locusts you must expect damage…but the objective of the measures we have put in place is to limit that damage. That is why we established a barrier along the 14th parallel," he said. Fakite said large swarms of locusts were still drifting into western Mali from Mauritania, but he added: "Generally speaking we are seing a decline in infestation levels acccross the country, largely as a result of treatment and the development of less favourable ecological conditions." The government currently has about 13 crop-spraying aircraft, 30 vehicles fitted with spraying equipment and 3,500 individual spraying kits in the form of backpacks, engaged in locust control operations throughout the country. Nearly 250,000 hectares have so far been treated with insecticide, but the Ministry of Agriculture said in its latest locust bulletin that bands of flightless larvae were still developing to the north of Mopti and around Timbuctoo and would remain present there until the end of October. The authorities estimate that over 700,000 hectares of land have been infested with locusts in landlocked Mali. Last month, the Ministry of Agriculture said it expected the insects to destroy about 441,000 of this year's grain harvest, which had otherwise been forecast at 3.1 million tonnes. However, agriculture ministry officials said privately in mid-September that they believed the insects would reduce the harvest by nearly one million tonnes. A more accurate evaluation of crop damage in Mali and other countries in West Africa affected by the locust invasion is currently being undertaken by government teams in conjunction with experts from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). This is due to be made public in early November. "We are not going to hazard a guess at any figures. We prefer to await the results of this survey, but it is certain that this (locust) invasion will have an impact on agricultural production," one Agriculture Ministry official told IRIN. FAO agricultural experts warned earlier this week in Senegal that the Sahel belt of West Africa should expect a fresh invasion of locusts next year. They warned that it would take two or three years to reduce the number of insects to the point where they no longer presented a significant threat to agriculture.