Locust swarms appear in north

Swarms of locusts appeared in Burkina Faso for the first time this week but they have so far caused only slight damage to crops in the far north of this landlocked West African country, Alphonse Banou, the Minister for Animal Resources said. He told a meeting of donor representatives on Thursday that swarms of locusts were first sighted in the northern provinces of Soum and Oudalam near the frontier with Mali on Monday. "For the moment, crop damage is minimal," Banou said. But he warned that unless the invasion of locusts was brought under control very soon, it could prove devastating. "Burkina Faso is essentially an agricultural country. An invasion of locusts would worry us considerably, particularly since the current planting season has got off to a difficult start," he said. The minister said that control teams had already been sent to spray the affected areas with insecticide, but he appealed to the international community for additional assistance. Banou said the government needed 70,000 litres of insecticide, four-wheel drive vehicles fitted with spraying equipment and crop-dusting planes within the next few days. The government also needed more walkie-talkie radios to communicate with control teams on the ground, he added. So far the government had sent 2,800 litres of insecticide to the affected areas around the towns of Gorom Gorom and Djibo, 250 km north of the capital Ouagadougou, but funds had been released to buy a further 11,100 litres, the minister said Over the past two months, swarms of locusts have spread south across the Sahara, causing extensive damage to crops and pasture in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and northern Senegal. Some have drifted as far east as central Chad. The grasshopper-like insects, which can eat their own weight of vegetation in a day, have begun breeding in several areas of the Sahel, which is currently in the middle of the rainy season. Agricultural experts fear that unless the young insects now hatching are destroyed on the ground before they can fly, new even larger swarms will develop in September, devastating crops across the region just as they become ready to harvest. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation, which has been warning about the risk since last October, has appealed for at $58 million to fight the locust swarms in West Africa. It has so far received $11 million with another $9 million in the pipeline, the FAO's Clive Elliott told IRIN earlier this week.