Just ahead of the Passover holiday, one of the 10 plagues has infested the
fields of Egypt and may be on its way to Israel, the Agriculture Ministry has
warned.
While the region is not breaking out in boils or lice, a swarm of
tens of millions of locusts has overtaken Egyptian desert land in the past few
days, according to the Egyptian government.
The onslaught of these
hopping and highly reproductive insects in a neighbor’s yard has therefore
prompted Israel’s Agriculture Ministry to issue a state of “locust alert.” It
moved to prepare the country for an invasion after its Plant Protection and
Inspection Services received word from the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) about the presence of large swarms of locusts in
Cairo.
Because of the winds and climactic conditions in the region, there
is a chance these locusts may come to Israel, the ministry said. Even more
problematic is the fact that the spring season is a season of reproduction –
posing a greater risk of locust population explosions during this
time.
“All the relevant parties in the areas that are expected to receive
locusts in Israel have received updates, and we are in a state of ‘locust
alert,’” said Miriam Freund, director of the Plant Protection and Inspection
Services.
“For Israel, aerial and ground pesticides are being arranged
and are ready to activate if and when we need them,” Freund said. “Plant
Protection and Inspection Services of the Agriculture Ministry is constantly in
touch with the FAO, whose role involves ongoing monitoring and reporting of the
movement of locusts in northern Africa and eastward, through India.”
A
statement from the Egyptian Agriculture Ministry on Monday said that teams had
been constantly working to eradicate the locusts, with a success rate of between
92 and 94 percent.
The ministry insisted that no damage or economic
losses had occurred thus far in Egyptian agriculture due to the pesticides and
to the locusts’ lack of reproductive maturity.
Egyptian media outlets
such as the Al-Ahram group of newspapers, however, described locusts attacking the El-Obour market in Cairo
on Sunday and quoted fearful farmers in Suez.
A local source told The
Jerusalem Post that the swarms are estimated to consist of anywhere between 30
million and 120 million locusts thus far, and have appeared in 15 out of Egypt’s
27 governorates.
Due to changing climate and wind patterns, as well as
dry crop beds, many of the locusts are appearing in places in which they never
have been spotted, the source said.
A particularly bad swarm infested the
Cairo market on Saturday, and the northeast Suez villages of El-Raeed and
Youssef El-Sabae also received a large concentration of the bugs the following
day.
Although many farmers have taken to burning tires as a technique for
warding off the insects, the Egyptian Agriculture Ministry has warned against
this practice due to fear of widespread fires, the source said. The government
there announced that it had established a task force that would help farmers
cope with the crisis, but a former ministry official stressed that the locusts
continued to pose a serious threat to agriculture, the source added.
The
locusts reached Cairo by flying with warm southern and southeastern winds, but
the system should move farther east on Tuesday, the FAO alert said. This change
in wind pattern could carry the locusts to northeast Egypt and the Sinai, as
well as to Israel and Jordan, the organization warned, noting that Lebanon had
also been put on alert.
As of January 2005 there have been no locusts in
Israel – with the last episode occurring in 2004.
That year the Plant
Protection and Inspection Services as well as partner agencies managed to
eradicate a swarm that had entered the country from Sinai. With help from the
right weather and wind conditions, many did not succeed in entering Israel,
while those that did were quickly eliminated, the Agriculture Ministry
explained.
A “locust alert” team undergoes courses and training exercises
each year, regardless of the emergency level, the ministry
stressed.
“When there is a single individual [locust] or isolated
individuals, you can kill them independently,” a ministry statement said, “If it
is a big swarm, the Agriculture Ministry will get involved and launch pest
control operations.”
The desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria in
scientific terms) is the most prominent agricultural pest since man began
cultivating plants – stemming from the times of the Bible and the Koran, the
Agriculture Ministry explained. Mentioned in many ancient writings, the swarms
remain a serious enemy in many countries and pose risks of hunger among certain
populations, depending on their size, speed and weather conditions, the ministry
said.
Overall, global damage from locusts in some years has reached a
quarter of a billion dollars due in part to the fact that locusts feed on a wide
variety of plant species – including leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds and tree
bark, the ministry said. In addition, every locust typically eats its equivalent
weight for one day of meals, and the number of locusts can range from 40 to 80
million for each square kilometer of land. One ton of locusts – a small part of
a locust pack – can consume enough food meant for 2,500 people, the ministry
said.
Meanwhile, their distribution is widespread, with close to 30
million square kilometers of the bugs living in 60 countries.
Desert
locusts hail from central Africa, growing in scattered populations over the
course of the year and thriving in rainy summer conditions.
Israel rests
on the northern border of locust invasions, and there have been 10 invasions
here in the past 150 years, according to the Agriculture Ministry. Typically,
each invasion has lasted several years, with the most difficult one occurring in
the 1950s and lasting an entire decade. During that period, the Agriculture
Ministry established the “locust alert” team.
Despite the Agriculture
Ministry’s decision to issue a state of “locust alert,” an expert said that
“they’re not a threat in any way unless you’re a farmer in Egypt or Sudan right
now.”
“What’s coming our way at the moment are just single animals or
tens of animals from the edge of what Egypt is experiencing at the moment,”
Prof. Amir Ayali, of Tel Aviv University’s zoology department, told the Post on
Monday.
While swarms of locusts have been attacking Egyptian lands, Ayali
said that the current situation is nothing compared to the previous incident in
2004 – a time in which they also came to Eilat by way of the Red Sea. As for
Africa, the ongoing situation pales in comparison to a more enormous locust
infestation that affected the continent in the 1980s, he
explained.
“There is nothing special to fear,” Ayali
added.
Although throughout the day there was a chance of the northern
winds carrying the insects to Israel, Ayali said he felt that on Tuesday the
winds would change significantly to the east, taking the locusts perhaps to
Saudi Arabia instead.
Deeming the threat minimal to Israeli farmers,
Ayali praised the Agriculture Ministry for being prepared for any incident that
could occur.
“They should be alarmed and on edge,” he said.
In the
case that the locust swarms do impact Israelis, Kanat – Insurance Fund for
Natural Risks in Agriculture stressed that insurance against natural disasters
for the country’s fruit and vegetable growers also covers damages caused by
locusts. In the vegetable industry, such insurance covers all damages caused by
pests, including locusts, while in the fruit industry, the insurance covers
direct damage inflicted upon the fruits themselves, but not to the
tree.
“Kanat is following the progress of the locusts and is in
continuous contact with the growers,” a statement from the fund
said.
Regardless of whether the locusts do end up swarming Israel,
Agriculture Ministry staff said they were preparing to deal with any situation,
and urged any resident to contact the ministry immediately by phone if he or she
encounters a swarm, from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.