Desert locust swarms

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The pictures coming in from East Africa are apocalyptic. Billions of locusts hatching out of the wet ground, marching destructively through crops, and launching into flight in search of new terrains. "This is certainly the worst situation we have seen in the last 15 years," FAO locust specialist Keith Cressman tells Discovery. And in East Africa there has been nothing like this for 70 years. As the region braces itself for another cycle of egg laying and hatching, Roland Pease hears from the scientists using satellite technology, mobile phones and big data to protect the crops just starting to grow. (Photo: Desert Locust Swarms, Credit: FAO/Sven Torfinn)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.1	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. Comedy is a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know, I also know that comedy is really
0:24.3	subjective and everyone has different tastes. So we've got a huge range of comedy on offer from
0:29.8	satire to silly, shocking to soothing, profound to just general pratting about.
0:35.0	So if you fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds. This is discovery from the BBC. I'm Roland Pease. If it weren't for COVID-19,
0:51.0	one looming international crisis would be dominating the headlines.
0:55.0	This is certainly the worst situation that we've seen in the last 15 years.
1:00.0	Large parts of East Africa and beyond having already been hit by swarms of
1:05.5	locusts are about to be hit by a bigger second wave.
1:09.7	There's eggs in very large areas of Kenya, there's eggs also in Ethiopia, there's eggs also in
1:17.0	Oman and Yemen, and so yes, the situation is looking particularly dangerous right now.
1:24.8	The region has seen nothing like it in 70 years.
1:27.8	It's 15 years since the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has dealt with anything on this scale.
1:34.0	In 2003, 2005 there was what we call a locus upsurge.
1:38.0	It was in West and Northwest Africa.
1:41.0	That essentially took two years to bring under control something like 12 million hectares were sprayed and something like 500 million dollars were spent on those efforts.
1:50.6	Even the experts are shocked. Well just this morning I was looking at our videos from Kenya.
1:56.0	We're developing advanced computer vision software to track tens of thousands of insects simultaneously
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