{"id":4025,"date":"2019-12-18T22:56:58","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T22:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/?p=4025"},"modified":"2019-12-19T09:23:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T09:23:09","slug":"somalia-gears-up-for-a-long-fight-against-desert-locust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/2019\/12\/18\/somalia-gears-up-for-a-long-fight-against-desert-locust\/","title":{"rendered":"Somalia gears up for a long fight against Desert Locust"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROME (SoOHA) – <\/strong>Somalia\u00a0faces the worst\u00a0Desert Locust outbreak\u00a0in over 25 years, according to an emergency update issued today by the country office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Somalia and\u00a0FAO\u2019s Desert Locust Information Service\u00a0in Rome.<\/p>\n

Desert Locust breeding is ongoing in Galmudug (Mudug), Puntland and Somaliland. An estimated 70 000 hectares of land have been infested by hoppers and breeding adults, which have already damaged crops and pasture in\u00a0Ethiopia\u00a0and\u00a0Somalia. The pest is affecting pasture and threatening staple food crops of households in rural areas.<\/p>\n

Over the next six months, more than 100 000 hectares of land will require direct control interventions in Somalia. The fight against the\u00a0Desert Locust<\/strong>\u00a0calls for immediate institutional, infrastructural and technical investments for larger-scale actions in 2020 and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are talking about a medium- to long-term intervention. The impact of our actions in the short term is going to be very limited, but we can make a difference to support livelihoods and avoid further disastrous consequences for the next Gu season in 2020 if we act now\u201d, says Etienne Peterschmitt, FAO Representative in Somalia a.i, adding that FAO requires an additional USD 3 million for the initial response.<\/p>\n

Unanticipated scale, transboundary consequences, and challenges in fighting the outbreak<\/strong><\/p>\n

The situation is far worse than anticipated and has been exacerbated by exceptionally high rainfall and\u00a0cyclone Pawan. If unaddressed, the Desert Locust will likely spread to main crop growing areas in southern Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, and northeastern Kenya.<\/p>\n

So far, the locust infestations have been confined to rangeland and grassland areas in Puntland and Somaliland. However, once adults form immature swarms, there is a greater possibility that some swarms will migrate south towards the Ethiopian border area with southern Somalia (Hirshabelle, Jubaland and South West Federal Member states) while others will remain in place, mature and lay eggs for another generation of breeding, according to FAO.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe immature swarms are the most destructive stage and can seriously threaten 2019 Deyr (October-December) season food and fodder production,\u201d says Alphonse Owuor, Crop Protection Officer of FAO in\u00a0Somalia. Limited resources and capacity compared to the immense scale of the outbreak, coupled with continued insecurity in central and southern Somalia, pose a serious challenge to combat this unprecedented massive outbreak, which is expected to become a long fight that will require concerted efforts at the regional level.<\/p>\n

Thanks to funding from the\u00a0United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland\u00a0through its Department for International Development (DFID), FAO is already working very closely with Ministries of Agriculture and partner organizations on surveillance and control efforts in Puntland and Somaliland to prevent the spread of the pest to southern and central Somalia. FAO has also facilitated surveys covering over 20 000 hectares in Puntland and Somaliland, and 20 members of staff from the Ministry of Agricultural Development have been trained on the application of\u00a0biopesticides\u00a0in Somaliland, where spray operations have just started to control breeding. \u201cGiven the scale of the disaster, aerial spraying using airplanes would have been the ideal control measure. However, security conditions in most parts of Somalia do not allow it,\u201d says Peterschmitt.<\/p>\n

Source: FAO<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROME (SoOHA) – Somalia\u00a0faces the worst\u00a0Desert Locust outbreak\u00a0in over 25 years, according to an emergency update issued today by the country office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Somalia and\u00a0FAO\u2019s Desert Locust Information Service\u00a0in Rome. Desert Locust breeding is ongoing in Galmudug (Mudug), Puntland and Somaliland. An estimated 70 000 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-food-security-cluster","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4025\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}