{"id":7482,"date":"2020-01-15T10:44:38","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T07:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=7482"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:47","slug":"turning-disaster-into-a-delicacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/01\/15\/turning-disaster-into-a-delicacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning Disaster Into A Delicacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cPANIC AS LOCUSTS RAID FOOD BASKET\u201d<\/em><\/strong> was one of the headlines in The Daily Nation Newspaper on 14th January 2020 <\/a> Locusts have invaded the country and it has become a headline for the past several days. Trust Kenyans to already have memes about the locusts, always trying to make light of whatever topic is trending. Swarms of locusts have been seen in different parts of the country, from Kirinyaga, Laikipia, Wajir, Garissa, Marsabit, Isiolo, Meru and even Samburu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get a bit of history about these\ninsects, locusts have formed plagues since prehistory ancient times, Egyptians\ncurved them on their tombs and the insects are even mentioned in religious\nbooks like the Bible and the Quran. Swarms have devastated crops and have been\na very huge contribution to famines and human migration. It is not only in\nKenya that locusts are being reported, but different parts of the world have\nalso experienced swarms of locusts except for North America and Antarctica. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Locusts have for a long time been\nconsidered edible and a delicacy in some parts of the world. They are eaten in\nmany Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries. That is not strange to me\nsince growing up in the village in Kenya meant that we were running around\ncatching them, though we sometimes captured them and played with them, there\nwere those kids who took home to be cooked and they enjoyed them as an evening\nmeal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A plate of locust with hands – (twitter.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That got me wondering, what is making these locusts to start migrating into towns looking for food yet leaving destruction on their wake by feeding on farmers\u2019 hard work? The most possible reason is that they are flying away from lack of food since their habitats have been encroached by humans. Forest cover continues to decrease not only in Kenya but around the world. As the human population grows rapidly with resources becoming less and less, wild animals seem to be escaping their natural habitats looking for food elsewhere, which means they enter our territory. Issues like deforestation, burning of forest land to create homes for people and climate change have caused wild animals to migrate towards human settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As more animals leave the forest,\nthey cause destruction to the survival of humans, locusts are even worse as\nthey come in swarms that can devour large tracts of land in a single second. If\nunchecked the locusts will cause food shortage in the areas that they have\nattacked or will be attacking because farmers will lose their crops thus have\nless food to survive on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a UN report, the United\nNation has always encouraged people to eat insects, saying eating more insects\ncould help fight world hunger. This could be a solution in the locust menace\nthat has seen many people unable to handle the large swarms of locusts that\nhave descended on their lands. As much as the locusts are causing a lot of harm\nto farmers, Kenya should devise a way of \u2018harvesting\u2019 the locust army to be\nused as food. This would be beneficial in areas like Mandera or Garissa which\nare prone to drought due to low or no rainfall at all. After all, locusts have\nbeen used as food all through history as they can be cooked in countless ways,\noften smoked, dried or fried served with an accompaniment or as a whole dish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our food preferences and palates have evolved over time and since they say that history repeats itself, it\u2019s time we started looking at the locust invasion as food provided freely from above. Our great great grandparents ate locusts, our grandparents ate locusts, our parents ate locusts, and we, well, those born before the 2000s, ate locusts, now they are available for those who have not had that experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliminating hunger does not\nnecessarily mean going to extreme lengths to find food, or finding complicated\nways of solving food shortages, it might just be that we need to turn to edible\ninsects that are already swarming in our territory\u2026 light at the end of the\ntunnel kind of thinking!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPANIC AS LOCUSTS RAID FOOD BASKET\u201d was one of the headlines in The Daily Nation Newspaper on 14th January 2020 Locusts have invaded the country and it has become a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":7485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[358,509,647,962],"class_list":["post-7482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-responsibility","tag-climate-change","tag-east-africa","tag-food-security","tag-locusts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}