A swarm of Moroccan locusts is wreaking havoc upon eastern Iran’s agricultural sector, according to Iranian media reports and footage showing large numbers of the insects descending on affected areas.
When speaking to the semi-official Mehr News Agency, medical officials assured the public that the insects pose no direct health risk. However, Tasnim News Agency reported that the invasion is threatening the “livelihoods of thousands of households.”
The Moroccan locust, also known as Dociostaurus maroccanus, is capable of rapid reproduction. Females can lay between two and four egg pods during their lifetime, with each pod containing an average of 30 eggs.
Primarily feeding on grain crops, date palms, citrus fruits, fruit trees, olives, and figs, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has described the species as “one of the most serious pests of many cultivated plants.”
In addition to damaging food crops, the insect can consume large quantities of rangeland vegetation, potentially creating feed shortages for livestock.
Farmers urged to refrain from harvesting
Authorities have reportedly sprayed large areas with pesticides and urged farmers to refrain from harvesting crops to reduce the risk of chemical contamination.
The sudden proliferation of Moroccan locusts has been attributed to changing weather patterns and drought conditions.
Iran has now entered its sixth consecutive year of water shortages, following years of poor water management. After abandoning the country’s ancient qanat aquifer system, authorities constructed dams in an effort to boost agricultural output. That short-term approach contributed to rivers drying up, a phenomenon that has only worsened as global temperatures rose.
“In the southern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, one of Iran’s poorest regions, farmers are fighting a locust infestation that has seen pest density quadruple compared to last year. In normal times, this would be a manageable agricultural problem. In the current climate, it is something more troubling,” Roger Macmillan, a security analyst and former director for Iran International, told The Jerusalem Post. “This is a region where households already depend heavily on subsistence farming and livestock. Experts on the ground are warning that, without rapid intervention, up to half of some local harvests could be lost. For families with no savings buffer, no access to credit, and no meaningful state safety net, it is the difference between eating and not eating.
“The locust threat sits on top of years of drought, chronic under-investment in agriculture, and an import system that sanctions and now conflict have made increasingly unreliable. But it also sits on top of something broader: decades of economic mismanagement, cronyism, and the diversion of national resources toward the regime’s military and ideological priorities rather than the basic infrastructure that might have made communities resilient to exactly this kind of shock. Iran cannot easily replace what it fails to grow domestically. The currency to buy alternatives on world markets (even if they could) has largely evaporated. The combination of factors, in this region at least, moves the conversation from economic hardship into genuine food security risk.”