New crop-destroying locust swarms hitting East Africa ‘nearly every day,’ UN warns in renewed call to fight major food security threat

United Nations | January 21, 2021

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Dominique Burgeon, FAO’s [the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization] Director of Emergencies and Resilience, said the huge [African] desert locust swarms in 2020, some as wide as 60 kilometers, had not been seen in decades, threatening food security in a region where many were already going hungry. 

Surveillance and response led to 1.6 million hectares of land being treated.  As a result, more than three million tonnes of cereals, valued at approximately $940 million, were protected: enough to feed 21 million people for a year. 

“We can say that huge progress has been made, capacities of the countries have been tremendously augmented…but yet the situation is not over”, he told journalists. “We have made a huge effort, we are much better prepared, but we should not be complacent. We should not relax.”