SA Farmers Battle To Control Locust Swarms Of 'Biblical Proportions'

SA farmers battle to control locust swarms of biblical proportions

Tembile Sgqolana 

According to Agri SA, this is one of the biggest locust swarms in years and, with the assistance of donors and the Department of Agriculture, farmers are trying everything to save their land and food.

Farmers in the Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape Karoo are struggling to control the locust swarms that have damaged and consumed thousands of hectares of grazing land.

According to Agri SA, this is one of the biggest locust swarms in years and, with the assistance of donors and the Department of Agriculture, farmers are trying everything to save their land and food.

Northern Cape farmer Barry Naude said the locusts had caused a huge amount of damage to his farm.

“Considering that we just came out of four years of drought and we received our first rains in November last year. In the farms that they have rested on, they have caused absolute mayhem,” he said.

Naude said he had lost the grazing land for his sheep.

“In a couple of weeks, we will go to minus degrees as it is winter, and the veld that has been damaged and now going to winter is a lot. They have eaten tonnes of food and have done a lot of damage to us,” he said.

The locusts arrived at his farm in Richmond in the Northern Cape on Wednesday afternoon and settled there, only flying away on Thursday afternoon.

“They left behind a trail of devastation. This must count as one of the biggest swarms in recent times… it covered an area of about 5,000 hectares… about 10,000 rugby fields,” he said.

Andrea Campher, Agri SA’s risk and disaster manager, said it was one of the biggest locust outbreaks that they had seen in many years.

“The outbreaks are occurring in the Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape, basically in the Karoo belt. With the high or above normal rainfall we have seen now, locusts or pest disease outbreaks normally occur. It’s a normal phenomenon that locusts break out during high rainfall seasons, especially in dry and semi-arid areas such as the Karoo,” she said.

Campher said there had been massive locust outbreaks in the Northern Cape and Western Cape.

“They are estimating that some of these swarms are reaching 5km by 20km in diameter. Some say there are swarms that are bigger than 4,000 hectares in diameter. We have also seen outbreaks in the Eastern Cape in Graaff-Reinet and Aberdeen,” Campher said.

She said the outbreak had exceeded the capacity of control teams on ground level, and aerial support had been mobilised through the government as well as organised agriculture.

“Agri SA has donated more than R500,000 to support aerial spraying across Western Cape and Northern Cape. We received word on Friday afternoon that the Eastern Cape will also need immediate aerial support because the swarms have started flying from the Northern Cape and Western Cape towards the Eastern Cape.”    

“It’s now at a critical stage where the swarms have started flying and the ground teams, as well as aerial support, are working nonstop to control these outbreaks. We are calling on the private sector to make donations so that we get aerial support. The department supports us with poison,” she said.

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