Two weeks ago a Boeing 737 on final approach to Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, flew into a massive cloud of locusts swarming above the airport.
The insects were sucked into the plane’s engines and splattered across the windshield, blinding the pilots to the runway ahead.
Throttling up to climb above the swarm, the pilot had to depressurize the cabin so he could reach around from the side window and clear the windshield by hand. Diverting to Addis Ababa, the plane was able to land safely.
The locusts that almost brought down the 737 are part of the worst infestation to hit Africa in 75 years.
Swarms of locusts can blanket 460 miles at a time and consume more than 400 million pounds of vegetation a day; and the grasshopper-like insects increase logarithmically, meaning locust swarms could be 500 times bigger in six months.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls the threat “unprecedented,” but attempts at aerial spraying have been too little, too late — largely because of FAO’s own politically-driven agenda to limit pesticides — and experts fear Africa may once again be tilting toward widespread famine.
As poor farmers futilely shoo the voracious insects away with sticks, this modern plague highlights the urgent need for pesticides to protect crops and save lives.
It also casts into stark relief the tragic consequences of UN, European and environmentalist campaigns to deny these life-saving chemicals to developing nations.
Over the last decade, development organizations and activist NGOs have increasingly pushed organic-style agriculture on the poorest nations, making assistance dependent on a highly politicized version of “agro-ecology” that arbitrarily limits pesticides, bans advanced hybrid crops and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and extols the virtues of “peasant” farming.
The result is that Africa has been left virtually defenseless against successive natural assaults to the continent’s ability to feed itself.
The locusts arrive on top of Africa’s on-going struggle with the Fall Army Worm (FAW), which has already spread to some 44 countries. It feeds on a range of plants, but prefers corn, the staple food for most Africans, and has reduced yields by 50% in many regions.
In the Americas, FAW is kept in check by a combination of insect-resistant GMOs and modern pesticides.
Yet most African countries have not authorized GMOs because of well-funded environmental propaganda campaigns demonizing the technology — claiming GMOs cause everything from impotence to cancer and autism — and fear of losing their primary export market in Europe, which has arbitrarily restricted critical pesticides used in every other advanced, developed region of the world.
The FAO, while discouraging pesticides and GMOs, advises farmers to pick off the insects one by one and crush them with their hands.
Add to this epidemics of Wheat Rust (potential crop loss 100%); Banana Wilt (50% crop loss); and Cassava Mosaic Virus (up to 90% loss).
There are thousands of pests around the world that attack agricultural plants, and they don’t just kill crops.
Molds that can only be controlled with pesticides produce highly poisonous metabolites called mycotoxins that, if they don’t kill you immediately, can give you cancer and destroy your immune system.
They probably constitute the number one food-health threat even in wealthy nations, but we keep levels safe with pesticides, GMOs, and expensive food inspection regimes — all things Africa is being denied or can’t afford.
Then there are the insect-borne diseases like Malaria, Zika, Dengue, and countless other parasitic and viral infections.
When Zika or West Nile threaten our cities, we haul out the spray cans and ignore the griping of environmentalists.
In Africa, however, the anti-pesticide groups hold sway. At their urging, Kenya may soon ban over 200 pesticides that evidence-based regulatory agencies around the world have deemed safe and that Kenya’s farmers desperately need.
Those who think small-scale organic farming is friendlier to mother nature are wrong. Organic farmers use lots of pesticides.
They’re simply “natural” ones, like copper sulfate or neem oil, which are highly toxic to people and wildlife. They’re also less effective against pests, so they have to use more of them.
Modern pesticides are among the most carefully tested and regulated chemicals in use, and they are used increasingly in targeted, precise ways to limit wider environmental impacts.
Most importantly, modern farming allows us to produce more food on less land. According to Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel, US corn production has quintupled on the same amount of land.
He estimates that if American farming techniques were to be adopted globally, an area the size of India could be returned to nature over the next 50 years.
“Better Living Through Chemistry” was the catchy DuPont slogan of the 1960s. The slogan rings true for those of us living longer, healthier lives of plenty, with more food than at any time in human history.
But if the campaigns against chemicals and the demonization of modern agriculture are successful, these gains may well be reversed.
Perhaps that’s the plan. Radical environmentalists have maintained that human beings are the problem. “Fewer Living Without Chemistry” might as well be the slogan of the modern environmentalist movement.
Read more at CapX
I receive several farm related publications. SUSTAINABILITY is the common theme in all of them. Maybe it’s to placate the environmentalists. Maybe it’s to keep the government’s subsidies for Canadian publications rolling in. PROFITABLE gets little mention.
I had just commented the other day that hordes of locusts is a thing of the past, just to have them materialize in Africa again. We have the chemicals and technology to deal with this. But if we regulate that the poor Africans have to use inefficient organic farming as their default, then you get locust swarms. And famine, and starvation.
This is nothing more than eco-terrorist Imperialism.
NGO’s by pass democracy. They are not elected and are staffed by some of the most radical people on the planet. This article shows the damage they have done in Africa. Yet, there is no accountability. They can’t be thrown out in the next election. Rather than sue the oil companies for damage that they haven’t and will not do, the NGO’s and their members should be sued for the damage they actually are doing.
I find it strange that with modern technology the 737 had a hard time in the swarm of locusts. Over 70 years ago my father landed a B-29 in a sand storm. He was flying blind and used an electronic beacon to guide the plane in.
You obviously know not much about aviation and regulations regarding instrument approaches, minimum altitude and limitations around airport and runways.
Even your father had to have sight of the runways at minimum altitude to land the aircraft which the crew of this aircraft did not have due to their totally blinded windows.
What goes up must come down. Modern passenger planes have to land, and do.
Maybe Dire Dawa lacks the technology we take for granted.
As orville Wright once said to the anxious mother of a paying passenger “There’s nothing to worry about M’am, nobody who’s ever gone up in one of these things has failed to come down”
I admit to not knowing much about modern aviation regulations. My father had no line of sight or any sight at all. The windows the B-29 were sand blasted and it wasn’t possible to see through them even after the storm was over.
some of the thing we don’t here of anymore from the M.S.Media is Acid Rain we were always hearing about Acid Rain from American Factories was killing trees in Canada then they found out wood boring insects were responsible or the deformed frogs was caused by man made chemicals contaminating wetland areas it was later found to be caused by parasites Its always the M.S.Media who always spread false news
Contrast the above story by DDT lobbyists to this one which claims <<“Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region’s wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker. He blamed rapidly warming waters in the Indian Ocean off Africa’s eastern coast, which also spawned an unusual number of strong tropical cyclones off Africa last year. Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures are favorable conditions for locust breeding and in this case the conditions have become “exceptional,” he said. Even now rainfall continues in some parts of the vast region. The greenery that springs up keeps the locusts fuelled.” … To help prevent and control outbreaks, authorities analyze satellite images, stockpile pesticides and conduct aerial spraying. In Ethiopia, officials have said they deployed four small planes to help fight the invasion. The U.N. on Wednesday allocated $10 million for aerial spraying, with humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock saying families across the region “now face the prospect of watching as their crops are destroyed before their eyes.”>>
https://apnews.com/c89d01fd28ab067ef9bf5ca017904768
Sad, very sad indictment of the Communist left but remember one of their aims is to reduce the population, especially in Africa. Why supply sprays when a good famine (in their eyes) will do a really good job for them. Same here in Australia with the banning of fruit fly sprays. Everyone lost their goods and eventually, behind the scenes the sprays quietly came back on the market. Same with Roundup. Just because two or three people supposedly got cancer from it there was talk of banning it too. (My sympathies to the sufferers) but was it actually the chemical? I have used it carefully for over 50 years and never had a so much as a sneeze. What the Left want is power at any cost, no matter how many die, just check Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc, etc.
So where have radical (or even non-radical) environmentalists have ever made things better? Going back to Silent Spring’s Rachel Carson and her fight against DDT resulting in increased malaria incidence in Africa to preventing proper forest management resulting in more severe forest fires in California the last few years and now the vast forest/brush fires in Australia. Wherever these people go they make things worse for both the humans affected as well as for the flora and fauna they pretend to care about.
Banning DDT over the lies and Junk Science from Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring this is one of the results of banning a pesticide all because of Lies and Junk Science Its way too bad this don’t happen to Prince Charles or John Travolta and his 707 Banning a pesticide like DDT was a big mistake but the lies have it
Rachel Carson, Maurice Strong, Rahindra Pacharire and the entire UN. Captains of Group think. We are in a trap caused by the above mentioned short thinkers and political class that have been aided by a extremely shallow media that have stampeded the group thinkers by fear into ignoring science and placing their faith in invalidated computer output. The absolute stupidity is beyond comprehension. It is inconceivable that given our ability to communicate in the western world, that we have been stuck in this trap. We are consumed at the present by a rather serious strain of the flu when the Africa is losing it’s ability to feed itself to locust. An it has been, at least in part caused by the UN the hoards eco-terrorists such as Green Peace, Sierra, Rockefeller’s etc. Absolutely unbelievable.