photo by Jon Shadid

Thousands of poor West African farmers have lost their crops in the worst locust invasion in a decade. "We've had locusts before, but I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime," says Yal Djibril, 40, a subsistence farmer who lives near Boghé, a border town in southern Mauritania. This region is the breadbasket of a country where people suffer from chronic food shortages even when harvests are good.

In September, Yal and his 14-year-old son, Ousman, watched in horror as swarms of locusts ravaged their fields of cowpeas and melons in a matter of hours. The eerie chomping sound of millions of mouths at work filled the air. A locust can consume its body weight (about two grams) in vegetation daily. A small part of an average swarm (or about one tonne of locusts) can eat the same amount of food in one day as 2,500 people.

photo by Jon Shadid

While Mauritania is the hardest hit, the locusts descended upon Chad, Mali, Niger, and Senegal as well. Government experts in Mauritania project severe food shortages because the insects have infested 100 per cent of the agricultural land, destroying much of this year's harvest. An estimated 80 per cent of Mauritanians depend on agriculture and livestock for their living. "The locusts have devoured our crops and our pastures. They're eating better than our animals," says Yal.

World Vision is working with the National Locust Control Centre to combat the ongoing plague in Mauritania. Staff members are supporting teams of technicians who are spraying infested fields. World Vision is also training villagers on how to destroy the locusts using simple, low-tech methods. For instance, farmers can dig ditches around their fields and bury newly hatched locusts before they develop wings.

Mamadou Bocar, a farmer from Boghé, says the World Vision training workshop gave him hope. "I learned today that there are steps we can take to help control the situation. We have to work together to beat this. Our very survival depends on it."

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