A Plague of Locusts Descending Upon East Africa

JB Shreve
February 19, 2020 1 min to read
Reading Time: < 1 minute

In today’s podcast episode, Terrell Spencer and Jonathan Webster join JB Shreve to discuss the plague of locusts currently descending upon East Africa.

Basic Facts – Plague of Locusts

  • The locust plague swarm began arriving in East Africa from Yemen about three months ago.
  • 70,000 Hectares of farmland in Ethiopia and Somalia already destroyed.
  • According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), locust swarms of one square kilometer can eat the same amount of food in one day as about 35,000 people.
  • Locusts eat their own body weight in food every day.
  • The swarm of locusts in East Africa is breeding so fast, their numbers could increase 500 times by June.
  • Somalia has already declared a state of emergency.
  • Kenya has not experienced a locust plague of this magnitude for more than 70 years.
  • Somalia and Ethiopia have not experienced this magnitude of a locust swarm for more than a quarter-century.

This is a major event and crisis hitting the nations of East Africa and for some reason that we cannot explain – it is barely covered in the media today.

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