What is the role of FAO in locust control?
One of the mandates of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is to provide information on the general locust situation to all interested countries and to give timely warnings and forecasts to those countries in danger of invasion. Therefore, FAO operates a centralized Desert Locust information service within the Locust Group at FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy. All locust affected countries transmit locust data to FAO who in turn analyze this information in conjunction with weather and habitat data and satellite imagery in order to assess the current locust situation, provide forecasts up to six weeks in advance and issue warnings on an ad-hoc basis. FAO prepares monthly bulletins and periodic updates summarizing the locust situation and forecasting migration and breeding on a country by country basis. These are distributed by email, fax, and post. All locust information is archived at FAO Headquarters and some of this is available on the Internet. Furthermore,
