Locust Plagues

If you thought coronavirus was bad enough, think yourself very lucky you don't live in East Africa at the moment. At the beginning of April a local pastor there reported the arrival of a huge swarm of young desert locusts estimated to cover 100,000 acres (by comparison, the whole of Tendring District is only 83,392 acres). This would therefore be a cloud covering everywhere from Colchester to Harwich and beyond! There has already been a huge plague of locusts in early 2020 which devastated the crops of East Africa. This second swarm is allegedly 20 times as bad. The insects are all young adults which eat more than their older counterparts and will live longer. They have arrived just as the new plantings are beginning to shoot and are stripping everything in sight.