Enhance war on pests to avoid food shortages

Desert locusts invade Taiboto, Isiolo County. The desert locust is the most dangerous of all grasshoppers and is particularly ravenous. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Declaring a situation a state of emergency helps to focus resources that will help in bringing it under control with the least damage.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has taken to Twitter in an effort to draw global attention to the ongoing locust invasion in Kenya and other countries in the region.

Blaming the crisis on global warming, Mr Guterres says the invasion will make the “dire food security situation in East Africa even worse”.

The desert locust is the most dangerous of all grasshoppers and is particularly ravenous, eating its own weight every day.

Using an illustrative metaphor, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO’s) senior agriculture officer, Keith Cressman, says a swarm the size of Rome (1, 285km sq) can eat enough food in one day as everybody in Kenya (a country of close to 50 million people).

FAO top leadership today meets in Geneva, Switzerland, to assess what it calls an upsurge of locusts, just a step before a full plague.

In contrast, Kenyan authorities’ response to the locusts that have so far destroyed crops and pasture in northern and central parts of the country is casual.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

It does not reflect the seriousness of the threat by the pests to the household and national economy.

While Somalia and Pakistan have declared the invasion an emergency, it has not yet moved President Uhuru Kenyatta to as much as mention it.

In his much-anticipated State of the Nation address from Mombasa a fortnight ago, which, incidentally, dwelt on agriculture, the President did not say anything about the pests that have the potential to knock down whole seasons of food.

Declaring a situation a state of emergency helps to focus resources that will help in bringing it under control with the least damage.

So far, the march has fortunately spared the traditional food basket regions of the country.

The timing has also been ‘favourable’ as food crops in the areas the pests have visited are nearing harvest while in many parts of the country, the next crop is yet to be planted.

USE OF CHEMICALS

But danger lurks around the corner. Farmers are preparing their land for planting and experts warn that the next generation of locusts will come of age in March and April to coincide with the germination of maize.

Attack on their breeding areas, therefore, needs to be intensified. Yet, care needs to be taken to ensure safe control methods.

Some scientists have raised the alarm on the non-discriminative nature of some of the chemicals on use.

They worry that the aerial and ground spraying contaminates vegetation and waterways on which livestock and human beings depend on.

The chemicals being used include Fenitrothion, Fipronil and Chlorpyrifos, which are a broad-spectrum insecticides, meaning their effects cannot be limited to killing locusts, but will affect many types of insects, particularly bees and other social insects, as well as higher organisms such as birds.

To be fair, the Ministry of Agriculture, The Desert Locust Control Organisation for Eastern Africa, the Entomologist Society of Kenya, the Northern Rangelands Trust and the county governments have jointly and separately been battling the menace with mixed success.

FOOD SECURITY

The ministry’s response has also improved remarkably from the early days of “taking photos of locusts and posting them on social media to alert the government”.

But real victory will only be in sight if all the government resources is directed at the menace.

More broadly, the whole Agriculture sector cries out for more thoughtful attention. President Kenyatta appears keen to address the challenges facing farmers in the milk, tea, coffee and rice subsectors.

However, some of the medicines he is doling out will only be palliative, offering immediate relief, while leaving the inner rot untouched.

For instance, the Sh500 million he asked the Treasury to release for buying milk from farmers can only run for one month. A longer-lasting measure would have been to address animal feed prices that make Kenya’s dairy farming a costly affair.

As FAO meets 10,000 kilometres away about our food security situation, what serious efforts are we making as a country to help ourselves?

Mr Sigei is Nation’s Agriculture editor. [email protected]