{"id":4240,"date":"2020-02-15T22:54:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T22:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/?p=4240"},"modified":"2020-02-16T08:12:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T08:12:51","slug":"un-warns-of-looming-food-shortage-on-the-horn-of-africa-due-to-locust-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/2020\/02\/15\/un-warns-of-looming-food-shortage-on-the-horn-of-africa-due-to-locust-invasion\/","title":{"rendered":"UN warns of looming food shortage on the horn of Africa due to locust invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>CAPITALS &#8212;<\/strong> The East African region could be on the verge of a food crisis if huge swarms of locusts devouring crops and pasture are not brought under control.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A massive food assistance may be required, Dominique Burgeon, director of emergencies for the UN\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are affected.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Efforts to control the infestation have so far not been effective.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Aerial spraying of pesticides is the most effective way of fighting the swarms but countries in the region do not have the right resources.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There are fears that the locusts \u2013 already in the hundreds of billions \u2013 will multiply further.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The FAO says the insects are breeding so fast that numbers could grow 500 times by June.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The UN body has now called on the international community to provide nearly $76m (\u00a358m) to fund the spraying of the affected areas with insecticide.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIf it doesn\u2019t, the situation will deteriorate and then you will need to provide massive food assistance for a humanitarian situation that may even get out of control,\u201d Mr. Burgeon said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThere is always a risk when you have people in acute food insecurity that famine is not very far,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An FAO spokesperson later clarified that they were not warning about a famine but rather \u201cfood insecurity\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Source: Radio Dalsan<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CAPITALS &#8212; The East African region could be on the verge of a food crisis if huge swarms of locusts devouring crops and pasture are not brought under control. A massive food assistance may be required, Dominique Burgeon, director of emergencies for the UN\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said. Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-environment-and-disasters","category-food-security-cluster","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240","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=4240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4241,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions\/4241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}