Senegalese spray teams arrive to fight locusts

Five pick-up trucks equipped with spraying gear and pesticides arrived in Guinea-Bissau from Senegal on Wednesday to help control swarms of locusts which are damaging cassava fields and cashew nut trees in the north and east of the country, Agriculture Minister Joa de Carvalhao said. He told IRIN that the Senegalese control teams would start work on Thursday. Portugal, the former colonial power, has announced that it will fund the campaign to rid Guinea-Bissau of the voracious insects. Locusts began to invade the country from southern Senegal on 19 December and have now spread as far west as the Bijagos islands on the country's Atlantic coast. Portuguese ambassador Jose Manuel Paes Moreira said on Tuesday that Portugal would give an immediate donation of US $331,000 to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to pay the entire cost of the FAO's emergency locust control operations in Guinea-Bissau. Carvalho, the Agriculture Minister, said: "This Portuguese aid will allow us to effectively fight the plague of locusts which has infested several regions of our country." However, Norbert Dazogbo, the FAO representative in Guinea-Bissau, cautioned that more money would be needed from other donors if the insects started to breed. Swarms of locusts have already attacked the cashew nut trees which provide Guinea-Bissau's main export and a vital cash income for two thirds of the country's peasant farmers. The cashew trees are currently in flower and Agriculture Ministry officials fear that locust damage at this stage could sharply reduce this year's crop of nuts. The small West African country of 1.3 million people earned US $61 million from exporting 93,000 tonnes of cashew nuts in 2004. Reports from the interior say the locusts have also attacked fields of cassava and vegetables, and mango trees.