In May 2022, the largest locust infestation in a quarter century descended on South Africa’s Eastern Cape, stripping 19,305 square miles of grazing land. With another swarm predicted for September (the arrival of spring in the Southern Hemisphere), farmers in the vast 65,238-square-mile province have joined with researchers to introduce a high-tech innovation—a software package to track locust swarms in real time in the hopes of targeting them for extermination before they cause severe damage.
This will mark the first time the cutting-edge software is used to track locusts in South Africa, says Bruce Jones, the country representative for EarthRanger, a software product of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a nonprofit research institute. The software solution, developed by Vulcan Incorporated with several conservation and technology partners, combines real-time data from ranger patrols, remote imaging, and various sensors to generate real-time wildlife and/or pest reports covering vast swaths of land.
Previously, this tracking software had been used in South Africa only to monitor the movements of large game animals. It was introduced there in 2017 after 113 elephants died over a two year period at the hands of poachers in the country’s biggest nature reserve, the 7,523-square-mile Kruger National Park.
Jones noted that the locust tracking technology is widely used in East Africa where the insects swarmed at record levels in 2019 through Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, and Tanzania, only dwindling in numbers in 2021 after they were targeted by those countries.
Working in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), EarthRanger has operated command centers in Kenya and Ethiopia to monitor locust swarm movements while also tracking workers and aircraft in real time to coordinate their rapid deployment to exterminate swarms.
Gunther Pretorius, the manager of Eastern Cape’s agricultural association (AgriEC), says that before it invested in EarthRanger’s assistance, his association and the province’s agriculture department could only pinpoint a locust swarm if a farmer or member of the public telephoned their offices with the information. But often lacking GPS coordinates, such calls made it very difficult to precisely locate the swarms.
“Now, the farmers can send GPS pins, and we can put this data into EarthRanger and see exactly where these locusts are, and whether they are at hopper stage [juvenile locusts that cannot yet get aloft] or already flyers,” said Pretorius. “It will make it very easy for our district locust officers to determine where to spray, which swarms are the biggest, and which swarms to spray first.”
The software is dependent on people on the ground to populate it with data via reports to the AgriEC office. While the technology is capable of interfacing with drones that could collect more data over a bigger area, that interface has not yet been set up in Eastern Cape.
However, Pretorius is confident the locust activity maps created by the software will go a long way toward helping farmers and the government wipe out infestations this September.
Finding, targeting, and eliminating swarms
Locust swarms threaten up to 10% of the world’s food supply, the FAO says, and Jones points out that since the swarms are annual events, reducing their volume would go a long way toward minimizing locust reproductive rates and their yearly damage.
The tracking process works best when it locates locusts while they are still “hoppers.” Once they’re spotted, farmers and locust control officers can most easily exterminate them on the ground at night or in the early morning when it’s cold and insect energy levels are low.
However, there’s a hitch, Pretorius said: Most swarms affecting the Eastern Cape start as hoppers in the neighboring Western and Northern Cape provinces and then fly over to Eastern Cape in hundreds of swarms up to 9.3 miles wide.
“We are actually the province that has the biggest problem because they reach us in a flying stage where it is very difficult to control them,” Pretorius explained. That’s because a locust swarm made up of millions of insects can travel fast, flying more than 93 miles daily, devouring crops, citrus tree leaves, and grasslands in its path. And hitting that rapidly moving target with sufficient pesticides can be challenging.
Because locusts lay eggs once they start flying, early tracking of the swarms will enable farmers and district locust officers to follow their flight path and look for eggs that can be destroyed before they hatch. This will help minimize future damaging swarms.
“Locust eggs can lie dormant for 10 or 15 years and then when the conditions are just right, they will hatch. This is why it is so important to track the swarms,” said AgriEC communications manager Jason Kümm.
Another artificial intelligence program, known as Kuzi, is in use in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda. The Kuzi software tracks locusts by collecting “satellite data for soil moisture, wind, humidity, surface temperatures, and the vegetation index,” which is then used to calculate a locust breeding index, which can help alert farmers to the birth of swarms three months in advance, explained Kuzi CEO John Oroko.
