Despite official statements downplaying the hazards, swarms of locusts are making their way across the country and have in fact reached the capital. Mustafa El-Minshawy follows the invasion Swarms of locusts are attacking Egypt's crops. Having arrived at the southern and western borders with Sudan and Libya at the end of last month, the voracious insects reached Alexandria and the Delta this week -- and yesterday made their way to Cairo. The threat to agricultural production is tremendous. A mature locust can eat one to two times its body weight per day. A large swarm -- weighing tens of thousands of tonnes -- can cover several square kilometres. The swarm can fly 3,500 kilometres in a month. A swarm of 400 million locusts can eat 80,000 tonnes of crops, enough to feed 20 million people. More than 20 swarms are believed to have already crossed into Egypt; many more may be on their way from West Africa, which is suffering its worst locust invasion in more than a decade. Agriculture Minister Ahmed El-Leithi, in late October, claimed that the situation was far from calamitous. "Only a few swarms of locusts crossed Egypt's western borders, but the situation has been fully contained," he said. Shortly thereafter, farmers in Alexandria and the central Delta governorate of Gharbiya were taken aback by what they called "clouds" of the crop- devouring insects. Large-scale infestations were reported in the Delta's most fertile regions. Locusts also attacked crops on the northwest coast near the borders with Libya. "It seems like an all-out war, no less. The swarms of locusts that have crossed into Egypt over the last 20 days have the potential to eat away all of the country's agricultural production in a matter of a few days," Abdel-Azim El- Gammal, a senior researcher at the Locust Research Institute, told Al-Ahram Weekly. The Agriculture Ministry seemed to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation for the first time last week, putting its anti-locust squads on alert, and carrying out massive pesticide campaigns to stem the flow. "We were told to shelve plans for the feast holiday, and report for duty as usual to treat infested fields," said Abdullah Gah-El-Rassoul, the director of a locust control unit. Gah-El-Rassoul explained earlier statements about the situation being under control by saying that a depression had forced wind-borne locusts moving from Western Africa to the Arabian Peninsula into the country. "Egypt is a transit country for locusts. But the unusual winds carried them deep into the edge of Cairo and into the Delta governorates," he said. Anti-locust squads are now on alert in Arish, on Egypt's borders with the Gaza Strip, and across its southern borders with Sudan, in anticipation of more invaders. A visit by the Weekly to Wadi Al-Natroun, 150 kilometres northwest of Cairo, revealed the magnitude of the crisis. Countless numbers of seven-centimetre long locusts -- red in colour with black spots on their wings -- hang from bushes and trees. "We kill more than seven million locusts everyday with pesticides," said Ragab Mohamed, a member of one of the locust- control squads. An assortment of fruits and other crops are planted on Wadi Al-Natroun's more than 70,000 feddans of fertile land. A visibly exhausted Gah-El-Rassoul said he had not slept for days. His team receives around 100 complaints of locust infestations in the area per day. He said his squads would remain on alert for the next two weeks. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported earlier in November that new swarms would begin to gather in the coming weeks as the locusts hatch, releasing up to billions more of the insects into the air. There is a palpable sadness among the farmers, many of whom have set fire to tyres, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky in a desperate bid to save their crops from the voracious pests. Some farm owners fear the worst is yet to come. "Locusts have invaded my farm every day for the last five days, in spite of being sprayed with pesticides," said Ahmed El-Alfi, who pointed to thousands of dead locusts on the ground of his grape farm. Locusts, which fly all day, only begin to eat at night. El-Alfi complained that the limited resources of the anti-locust squads would make it difficult to effectively end the infestations. He cited the lack of aerial spraying as an example. Agriculture Ministry officials retorted that airplanes could not define the swarms to be targeted, and that it was easier to treat the infested fields with vehicle-mounted sprayers. That justification, however, was questionable, coming just a few days after Cyprus said it had begun a massive aerial spraying campaign to deal with the same kind of locust invasion. Cyprus was one of the countries also affected by seasonal winds that have carried the insects across the eastern Mediterranean. There are also fears that whatever limited resources do exist could run out if the invasion becomes a perennial blight. The prices of the pesticides used to treat the infestation are beyond the means of many poor Egyptian farmers. The locusts could also lay eggs, which unless destroyed, would hatch in the spring and pose an even greater threat to next year's crops, aggravating the impact of a problem that could beset the agriculture sector -- which employs the largest work force in Egypt -- for a long time to come. It is clear that the Agriculture Ministry's original underestimation of the crisis was greatly counter-productive. "They did not take enough precautions to prevent locusts from moving across borders into areas as deep as the Delta governorates," said Anwar El-Wahsh, a Wadi Al-Natroun farm owner. Complaints by El- Wahsh, who is also a high-ranking official at the Arab League Secretariat, as well as other high- profile figures who have farms in the area, may be one reason why the anti-locust campaign was launched so vigorously, when it finally began. A source close to the squad said that not all of the complaints could be responded to. The media, meanwhile, has had a field day criticising the ministry for downplaying the impact of the plague, and thus losing credibility amongst traumatised farmers. The swarms have now made their way to Cairo as tens of thousands decended on the downtown area yesterday. Patients at the Sheikh Zayed Hospital near 6th of October city were shocked to find the hospital garden swarming with locusts last week. The current plague dwarfs Egypt's worst locust invasion in modern times, which took place 1968, when at least 20 swarms covering 400 kilometres reached southern Egypt. This time, said Gah-El-Rassoul, "it looks like a natural disaster -- like an earthquake or flood -- has really hit us."
