A new wave of locust invasion is looming with swarms sighted in Taita Taveta county.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nation had issued a Desert Locust invasion warning earlier, sighting important and widespread breeding in eastern Ethiopia and central Somalia, saying new swarms expected to fly south to Kenya from mid-November and mid-December.
Currently, technical teams from FAO, Ministry of Agriculture Livestock Fisheries & Cooperatives and Council of Governors are in the field to coordinate surveillance and control measures of the impending invasion.
The Kenya Defense Forces have been engaged by the Ministry and trained by FAO to support spraying in affected regions of the country. 500 national Youth Servicemen were also trained by FAO to carry out ground control of Desert Locusts. FAO has trained 160 surveillance scouts who will use the Elocust3m app to report desert locust sightings, as well as increasing the pool of Desert Locust experts by training 20 Young Professionals across the country.
FAO promised to provide a helicopter to supplement the KDF fleet in readiness to minimize the impact of the locusts during the current planting season.
