US provides spray planes to kill locusts but UN wants more

The United States has announced it will immediately supply six crop-dusting planes to kill locust swarms that are continuing to breed out of control in Mauritania, Mali and Senegal, threatening the impending grain harvest across the Sahel region of West Africa. Washington announced the initiative as the United Nations scrambled to find more planes to spray the locusts before they devour the harvest of maize, rice, sorghum and millet that is about to get under way throughout the region. "The most urgent requirements that FAO is striving to obtain are aircraft to undertake the transport of pesticides and to increase spraying capacity," Jacques Diouf, the director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said on Wednesday in a note made available to IRIN. Diouf said Italy and France had provided transport planes to make sure that supplies of insecticide were delivered rapidly to the locations where they were most needed and that the FAO was in touch with the United States, Canada and several other European countries to provide more heavy transport planes, such as Galaxies, C-130 Hercules and Antonov 124s. The US provision of six Turbo Thrush crop-spraying planes that will operate cross-border between Senegal, Mauritania and Mali - the three West African countries worst affected by the locust invasion - was announced on Wednesday. Each plane will be able to spray up to 5,000 hectares per day. The US aid pledge followed a 10-day tour of the region by Roger Winter, a deputy director of USAID. "We must do everything now to protect the crops while that is still possible and I have deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team to work with the FAO and the locust control committees put in place by the governments so that we can take part in the excellent collaboration which is being undertaken at a regional level," Winter said in a statement. By supplying these planes, the US will nearly double the value of aid it has given to combat the locust invasion to US$7 million. The traditional big donors from Europe and North America have been slow to react to the current locust invasion, despite warnings issued by agricultural experts since October 2003 that there would be a crisis this year if spraying was not carried out in time. Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, who fear the locusts currently breeding in the Sahel will move up to North Africa, have so far been at the forefront of initiatives to supply planes, ground-spraying teams and pesticides to their poorer neighbours south of the Sahara. Even Brazil and South Africa have chipped in by providing spray planes. But the provision of six more US planes marks the first major concrete contribution by a major western donor. Donors and FAO play blame game A closed door international meeting between in Dakar on Wednesday was overshadowed by recrimination between the FAO and donors about who was to blame for delays in tackling the locust plague, a source present at the meeting told IRIN.

The desert locust consumes its own weight in vegetation every day.

The source said FAO accused the donors of being slow in reacting to its appeal for US$100 million to tackle the locust swarms. The crisis could lead to famine in some parts of the Sahel if the insects are allowed to destroy a large percentage of the grain crop set to be harvested in October and November. But the donors, notably the United States, the European Union and France, criticised the FAO for not providing them with the proper information in good time and for being insufficiently prepared to cope with the emergency, the source said. FAO sources said so far donors had pledged less than half the $100 million sought in the appeal and less than $25 million had actually been disbursed to finance immediate action in the field. Only now are the West African countries affected by the outbreak starting to allow their locust control teams to operate freely across international borders. Previously each government had focused on tackling the situation within its own borders. This absence of cross-border activity has been a source of particular frustration to Senegal, which has been relatively successful in tackling the locust swarms which arrived in the country from neighbouring Mauritania in July and August. However, Mauritania has been less effective in organising its own locust control campaign and now fresh swarms of voracious pink immature locusts are drifting south from the desert nation to reinfect large areas of Senegal which have already been sprayed. An IRIN correspondent travelling in northwestern Senegal at the weekend came across one such swarm which had settled on fields of millet and groundnuts, where the decaying bodies of millions of locust larvae sprayed a few days earlier already littered the ground. Keith Cressman, a locust expert with the FAO in Rome, explained that the pesticides recommended by the FAO degrade quickly so as not to cause environmental damage. But this also means they are no longer effective if an area of land already sprayed suffers a fresh infestation of locusts. "We are using pesticides that after 24 to 48 hours lose their capacity to kill the locusts," he told IRIN Varying degrees of success in treating land By 28 September, Mauritania had managed to treat 212,000 hectares of the estimated 1.6 million hectares of land infested by locusts in the south of the mainly desert country - about 13 percent of the total. By the same date Senegal claimed to have treated over two thirds of the 300,000 hectares of locust-infested land on its own territory. The Senegalese Ministry of Agriculture noted in its daily locust bulletin on Wednesday: "The waltz of pink swarms coming from Mauritania and entering the country between Podor and Richard Toll continues…of the six swarms detected yesterday at Louga, Richard Toll and Dahra, four were eradicated." Cressman pointed out, however, that some swarms that had formed in Senegal were probably drifting into Mauritania too.

Mauritania is struggling to treat infested land

Although Mauritania, Mali and Senegal are the countries worst affected by locusts so far, the FAO has also reported swarms breeding in Niger, Chad and the north of Burkina Faso. On Wednesday, Burkinabe Agriculture Minister Salif Diallo urged farmers in the country to harvest their crops as soon as possible before the locusts - which can eat their own weight of food in a day - got a chance to devour them. He said about 31,000 hectares were infected by locusts in the north and swarms had been sighted as far south as Kaya, 100 km from the capital Ouagadougou. "We fear that in the weeks to come the insect invasion will spread," Diallo said. "That is why I seriously advise farmers in Burkina Faso to harvest early throughout the country." The Inter-State Committee to Fight Drought in the Sahel (CILSS), estimated earlier this month that the locust invasion could destroy up to 25 percent of this year's grain crop in the region, which would otherwise have been very good, given the plentiful and well-distributed rains. But the degree of damage is expected to vary from country to country. While Mauritania estimates that it will lose about 40 percent of its crops and pasture and Malian government officials privately forecast that a third of this year's grain crop will be destroyed by locusts, Senegal is still hoping for a better outcome. The Agriculture Ministry noted last week that the areas of southern and central Senegal which last year produced over 80 percent of the country's food crops had so far escaped the locusts. But Cressman warned there was a serious danger that the prevailing winds could soon drive swarms southwards to ravage the fields of ripening grain there.