Nowadays, the world is bubbled with COVID-19. However, to make matters worse, a swarm of locusts which started in East Africa attacked lots of farmland areas all over the world. Now, it was said that 400 billion locusts are approaching China.

▲ A swarm of locusts attacked many farm land all over the world

First of all, the main cause of a swarm of locusts is the unusual weather. The unusual weather caused Indian Ocean Dipole, extreme weather even bulking the sea temperature, and it brought some regions which are located in the east and west of the Indian Ocean intense flood and drought. Accordingly, it occurs tremendous downpour in East Africa which is located in the west of the Indian Ocean. With increasing humidity, hatching locusts eat any crop they can get their hands on. These locusts' eggs have an ability of dormancy, so the number of locusts could rapidly increase.

▲ Indian Ocean Dipole: positive phase and negative phase

Next, a swarm of locusts will affect many countries, so some countries are trying to minimize the damage. Many locusts eat away a lot of crops, and their number is still increasing. People might lose out the livelihood of one-tenth of the world's population because of a swarm of locusts. So, some countries use the way of mitigating the damage. For example, China even prepared duck troops that are constituted with 100 thousand of ducks that eat locusts. Also, some predicted the movement of locusts and took preventive measures using agricultural aircraft equipped with pesticides.

▲ Duck troops constituted with 100 thousand of ducks

To sum up, a swarm of massive locusts that is damaging a lot of crops and the economy was made by people's hands. All people must pay attention and protect the environment not to make it happened again. It is because it is no like to lock the stable door after the horse is stolen.

July 4th, 2020

By Son Chae Yun