Kenyan farmers are turning crop-eating locusts into sustainable animal feed.
Laura Stanford says the project helps farmers turn a profit with the very thing that killed their crops
When Laura Stanford heard stories from Kenyan farmers about the devastation that the locust infestation had on their crops, the first thing she noticed was the level of despair and helplessness.
So she helped come up with a sustainable way for communities who lost their livelihoods to turn a profit — by turning the very pest that killed their crops into animal feed.
"It was a thing that an individual could do to somehow make a difference in the face of this terrible, terrible thing that was happening to them, to their communities, their neighbours, the country as a whole," Stanford, the co-founder of The Bug Picture, told As It Happens host Carol Off.
'Biblical' scenes
Kenya is currently fighting its worst locust plague in more than 70 years.
The locust first made landfall in the Horn of Africa in 2019. Kenya was hit by a second wave last November, destroying tens of thousands of acres of crops and leaving millions of people food insecure.
Scientists blame climate change for creating ideal conditions for the locusts to thrive. Warm sea temperatures are creating more rain, allowing the insects to breed, and intense cyclones are dispersing the swarms further.
A swarm one square kilometre contains between 40 to 80 million locusts, and can consume enough food for 3,500 people in a single day.