Strange Sounds
Along with the invisible invader aka the coronavirus, several countries in South and Central Asia are also under a vicious attack by swarms of locusts.
The locusts first spread across East Africa in 2020 and hordes of them also made their way to Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Iraq before heading eastward into Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. And lately, locusts in the north have brought their voracious appetites to parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan in what is being called the worst plague of the pests in two decades.
As they devour vegetation along their journey, crops in the regions that the locusts have infested are suffering immeasurably.
The damage done by the pests combined with reductions in food production and global trade due to the coronavirus pandemic have sparked concerns that there could be food shortages in some parts of the world this winter.
These are desert locusts, described by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as “one of the most voracious insects, which… can eat all type of vegetation that it comes across.“
They originated in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula after heavy rains caused by a series of cyclones in the Indian Ocean in 2018 and 2019 produced conditions for locusts to greatly multiply.
Early spring rains in Iran hatched the local population that was quickly augmented by more desert locusts blown in from Africa and the Arabic countries.
By February 2020, Iran was battling swarms of the ravenous insects.
Mir said on May 15 that locusts had devoured fields and orchards over some 200,000 hectares in the seven southern provinces and that Iran’s military had offered to help battle the pests.
Pakistan had already declared a national emergency at the start of February as locusts stripped fields and orchards as swarms from last summer’s breeding made their way through the Balochistan, Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
A June 1 report from Nikkei Asian Review said the locusts had “already devoured considerable quantities of crops in over 60 districts” in provinces throughout Pakistan.
The same report noted that locusts had crossed into India and were in northwestern Rajasthan, northern Punjab, western Gujarat, and central Madhya Pradesh.
Many agricultural specialists are predicting a second wave of locusts to start making their way from Africa and the Arabian Peninsula toward Iran, Pakistan, and India at the beginning of the summer.
Locusts have been destroying crops in eastern Turkmenistan and western Uzbekistan in recent weeks, although officials there have not commented on it very much.
Turkmen authorities have not mentioned the locusts at all, though RFERL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, reported that locusts had spread over some 35,000 hectares of land in the Kerki district of Turkmenistan’s eastern Lebap Province, devastating crops.
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