[imagesource: YouTube / One Land Love It]

You’re looking at locusts, and lots of them, but we’ll get to the videos shortly.

Last year, Kenya suffered its worst locust infestation in 70 years, with swarms numbering well into the billions decimating crops as they moved.

South Africa was not spared, either, with our biggest locust outbreak in more than a decade starting in the Eastern Cape in October, and spreading to the Free State, the Northern Cape, and the Western Cape.

Northern Cape farmers were still battling brown locusts as recently as two weeks ago, and now it’s the Eastern Cape that is under siege.

Business Insider SA reports that the swarms have been filmed moving “through the grasslands outside the Eastern Cape town of Graaff-Reinet” in “a seemingly unending mass of locusts darkening the sky”.

This footage was shared by Landbou.com, with Philip Kemp, a government contractor in charge of locust control in the Graaff-Reinet region, saying these are “the worst swarms I have ever encountered, and I’ve been involved in locust spraying for many years.”

Observe:

I wouldn’t say the swarm is “darkening the sky”, but I also think you need to see it for yourself in order to fully grasp the situation.

Another video, uploaded last week to YouTube account One Land Love It, shows another swarm, with the footage shot in the “drought-ravaged Karoo in the Eastern Cape”.

Skip ahead to the 2:40 mark if you’re pressed for time and look at the sheer numbers:

Sadly for farmers in the area, and across the country, things are set to get to worse in the coming weeks, according to Dr. Gerhard Verdoorn of CropLife SA, a non-profit agricultural industry association.

There is no quick or easy fix to this agricultural problem, although, in Kenya and other parts of East Africa, The Bug Picture uses community-based harvesting and processing of locusts for use as the protein input in animal feed and biofertiliser.

[source:businsidersa]