The Pan African Climate Justice\nAlliance (PACJA) has called for an audit of the damage done in Kenya\u2019s\ncroplands by the deadly swarm of desert locusts to ease planning and budgeting\nfor shortfalls ahead in local supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview, PACJA executive\ndirector Mithika Mwenda said that the question wasn\u2019t whether damage had been\ninflicted but to what extent. He warned that failure to establish beforehand\nthe extent of the damage would result in last-minute attempts by policymakers\nto avert a looming food crisis but it would be too late. Although the\ngovernment has deployed helicopters to fight the swarms with pesticides, among\nother measures, the locusts have proved unrelenting, sweeping downward and\nclearing large swathes of cropland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday, unfortunately our focus is on\nother things like the BBI report while giving little attention to the locust\ninvasion whose impact is soon to be felt by all Kenyans, especially those at\nthe bottom of the food chain as shortages will likely drive up prices and\nstarve farmers of a source of livelihood,\u201d said Mwenda on the sidelines of a\nconference in Nairobi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mwenda said that the fact that Kenya is\nan agrarian economy, it cannot afford to overlook anything that poses a threat\nto its food basket, be it locusts or any other threat. Agriculture accounts for\nover a quarter of Kenya\u2019s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs over half\nthe population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An audit of the locust-inflicted damage\nwill, among other things, inform the government how much to budget for\nshortfalls, which will likely be plugged through imports in efforts to fight a\npossible rally in inflation, said Mwenda. Food carries the biggest weight in\nthe basket of goods and services that Kenya\u2019s statistics office uses to compute\nthe cost of living measure, also known as inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, he said,\nmanufacturers who rely on locally produced agricultural inputs could be forced\nto turn to imports should the local supply line be cut off by the locusts. This\nwould result in higher production costs, most likely again to be passed on to consumers\nand further driving inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to PACJA, locusts are a\nmenace because of their uncanny ability to change breeding patterns based on\ntheir environment. For the desert locusts, as long as there is food, further\nbreeding is guaranteed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Caught\nOff-guard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The locust menace has exposed a lack of\ndisaster preparedness by both the national and county governments, along with a\nwobbly damage control system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n National government honchos have admitted\nbeing caught off-guard despite an earlier warning by the Food and Agricultural\nOrganization (FAO) of an impending locust invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attack of this scale \u2013 not seen in\nat least about two decades \u2013 has already wreaked havoc in adjacent countries\n\u2013Somalia, Ethiopia and now Kenya. <\/p>\n\n\n\n PACJA admits that although pesticides are not good for the\nenvironment as well as the health of the people, it currently remains the best\nmechanism to control the spread of the swarms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The pan-African agency reckons that\nAfrican countries need to be proactive\nmore than reactive in handling disasters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has called for an audit of the damage done in Kenya\u2019s croplands by the deadly swarm of desert locusts to ease planning and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7819,"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":[],"class_list":["post-7813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}