Page 10 - AWA Vol.37 No.4

CROP PROTECTION

A HIGH-TECH RESPONSE IS HELPING COUNTRIES

WIN BATTLE AGAINST DESERT LOCUSTS

For the unsuspecting farmer, the made the fight more challenging. in the Horn of Africa for surveillance
Desert Locust is a formidable enemy. Up against the clock, Cressman and control operations, giving pilots
These wretched pests have a voracious turned to researchers at Pennsylvania the precise information they needed to
appetite, multiply rapidly and travel State University’s PlantVillage, which target locusts on the move. The tech-
up to 150 kilometers a day with the ca- provides technological solutions to nology was so effective in locust opera-
pacity to devour vast swathes of crops farmers and had previously created tions in Kenya that FAO soon expanded
and pastureland on the way. an app to help FAO track another its application to Ethiopia and Somalia.
In the past year, waves of the insid- dangerous agricultural pest, the Fall ‘‘Before we were just operating in the
ious insect swept across East Africa, Armyworm. dark. With Earth Ranger you can see
Yemen and southwest Asia in massive “Instead of reinventing the wheel, exactly the path the aircraft has taken
swarms that contained up to 80 million why not use their expertise with the and where it has sprayed. It has led to
in a single square kilometre. existing technology. Let’s adapt that a more effective use of the aircraft, and
The threat to agriculture and food app and use it for locusts,” comments more efficient control operations. I’m
security has been immense and the Cressman. sure that is a major factor which con-
challenge to bring them under con- In less than a month, Cressman and tributed to the decline in the upsurge
trol, urgent. the developers created a simple smart- which we are seeing now.’’
In response, FAO, with partners and phone app to allow anyone, even with FAO is also collaborating with re-
donors, developed an array of high- little training, to collect locust data in searchers from the US National Oceanic
tech tools that revolutionised locust the field. and Atmospheric Administration, the
detection, surveillance and treatment, But, not every farmer has a cell phone UK Meteorological Office and Cam-
helping affected countries to effectively and plenty of areas in East Africa are bridge University to develop new
control them. totally isolated from any network. So ways to improve swarm surveillance,
Using climate data and weather fore- FAO also partnered with global GPS forecasting and control strategies.
casting, FAO has been at the forefront supplier Garmin, to modify a satellite A space age boost to
in the fight against locusts for decades. data communicator that would over- surveillance
Its ground-breaking eLocust3 tablet, come connectivity obstacles in areas
which field teams use to collect crucial that have none. Satellites may be the biggest game
data around the world and feed it to Though FAO now receives up to 2 500 changer in the fight against Desert Lo-
FAO’s Desert Locust Information Ser- records of data a day, nearly 25 percent custs. Since rainfall is a critical compo-
vice, meant that FAO and national au- of the data is unusable or incorrect and nent for locust breeding, FAO is using
thorities could map locust movements FAO again turned to PlantVIllage to har- two satellites to identify rainfall and
and stay one step ahead of the game. ness artificial intelligence to rapidly vegetation that might be attract locusts
“It’s really the Rolls Royce of our data identify and remove the unwanted data. for breeding.
collection tools,” says Keith Cressman, FAO’s Desert Locust team then shares ‘‘It sounds like science fiction doesn’t
FAO’s senior locust forecaster. this data with control teams on the it?’’ says Cressman.
But, despite the tablets being used in ground and in the air so they can quick- A third satellite which Cressman
20 countries, the latest locust emergen- ly identify the location of the swarms, dubs the ‘Holy Grail of Desert Locust
cy meant that demand skyrocketed and and then target and kill them. monitoring’ goes a step further and
time was too short to train the farmers can detect soil moisture beneath the
and pastoralists. FAO was fighting a Detection from the air earth’s surface, conditions which would
battle on several fronts and needed a A telephone call from one of Kenya’s allow the female locust to lay her eggs.
heavier hand to tackle the onslaught. wildlife conservancies has also led to ‘‘It is not just about the moisture on the
“We are constantly looking for cut- another technological breakthrough. surface of the soil but also down about
ting edge technologies to harness and On the suggestion of one of the rangers, 15 centimetres, the depth to which fe-
adapt them into innovative tools that FAO took a digital system, called Earth males can lay their eggs,’’ he says.
can be used to improve our forecasting Ranger, used to monitor the movement FAO is working with NASA, the Euro-
and early warning,” says Cressman. of animals, and adapted it for locust pean Space Agency and the European
monitoring. Commission’s Joint Research Centre to
Remote communication tools Cressman worked with the devel- refine the satellite technology.
By January 2020, Desert Locust opers of Earth Ranger, a philanthropic Back on the ground, this satellite data
swarms the size of Paris or New York foundation called Vulcan, to fine tune is transmitted in real time across cell
were sweeping across the Horn of it specifically for aerial surveillance phones, tablets and other devices so
Africa, a region already impacted by and locust control. countries can mobilize their control
poverty and food insecurity. With the At the height of the locust response, teams and take immediate action to
pests’ ability to multiply 20 times with FAO partnered with 51 Degrees who tackle the locust swarms.
each generation, every day that passed used this tool to co-ordinate 28 aircraft
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8 Vol. 37 No. 4