 Hello, I'm Molly, a contributor here at Food Unfolded. Today we're looking at the ongoing locust crisis plaguing East Africa, why it happened and how it's been stopped. Since 2019, giant swarms of locusts have been devastating acres of cropped and pasture land from Africa to Asia and Middle East. This is having a huge impact on agricultural production, but most worrying of all is the threat these swarms are posing to rural livelihoods and food security. So far, East African regions have been hit the worst with certain countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia not having witnessed an outbreak like this in decades. And as swarms continue to consume the food supply of millions in regions already considered food insecure, the UN has warned urgent action needs to be taken in order to avoid a major humanitarian crisis. But what are desert locusts and what makes them one of the world's most dangerous pests? Desert locusts are actually a type of grasshopper that live in arid regions between West Africa and India. An average desert locust swarm can contain anywhere between 40 and 80 million individuals and travel up to 200 kilometers a day and in just 24 hours eats the same amount of food as 35,000 people. But not all desert locusts are this destructive. Normally, the insect spends most of its time alone and barely poses any threat to crops, but should the weather shift in their favour, desert locusts can take on a completely different form. When heavy rains fall in areas that are usually dry, vegetation starts to grow and desert locusts start to gather. If these gatherings become crowded, it prompts the locusts to transform into what's called their gregarious phase. In this phase, desert locusts start to act as an organised group. They breed at dramatically fast rates, their appetite becomes ravenous and even their wings grow to allow them to migrate. And once these swarms take flight, it becomes virtually impossible to stop them. A single case of rain isn't enough to create the kinds of swarms we're witnessing today. We need several intense episodes of rain before locust numbers can get anywhere close to this scale. Unfortunately, this is exactly what's happened over the last two years in the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa. Rare cyclones and storms hit these regions at a frequency and intensity not seen in decades, causing the outbreak. Research indicates that this extreme weather is the result of steadily rising ocean temperatures. Some reports have even warned that this stormy weather could become the new normal as climate change warms oceans worldwide. Before we all start to panic, for now it's too early to tell if these climate shifts will directly lead to more locust outbreaks, but it's a possibility we need to prepare for. Locust control experts have a number of cutting-edge tools at their disposal to manage locust populations. Technologies range from on-the-ground data collection tools which track the presence and migration of locusts to satellite imaging systems which can be used to predict future locust breeding grounds. Some countries such as China and India are even trialing the use of drones to carry out remote locust surveillance and small-scale pesticide management. While locust plagues have undoubtedly caused a lot of hardship for many throughout history, one silver lining to crisis events like these is that they can motivate us to work together to come up with more effective solutions. If we can use this outbreak to better understand locust forms and how they are connected to our climate, we can hopefully develop and implement right kinds of tools and methods to stay one step ahead of the past, reduce food insecurity and ultimately protect millions of lives.