Fields of grain gone in '30 seconds'

Hollywood gave a movie about stealing cars, starring actor Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie, the title "Gone in 60 Seconds."

And it's fact that car thieves can get away with a car in that time, under many circumstances.

But Hollywood has nothing on the locusts infesting vast swaths of African cropland now, because they can make a field of food disappear in 30 seconds.

It is the CBC that described the alarm expressed by the United Nations about the locusts swarms that "are so bad in some parts of Kenya that entire fields of crops are being devoured in as little as 30 seconds."

Just a week ago, there were no locusts in some areas of eastern Kenya, including Kitui County.

"Now, entire farms have been destroyed," the report said.

Moses Omondi, of the organization called Farm Radio that works to bring news to agricultural interests in that part of the world, was interviewed by the CBC.

He warned of the potential for catastrophe.

"Today one farmer [told me] all of his crops have already been consumed. He is affected psychologically to the extent of telling me that, 'If worst comes to worst, I can even commit suicide.' The reason being, this is the source of his income. He's been taking his kid to school using farm produce. He's been paying bills using farm produce. So according to him, he [says], 'Moses, if this continues — if the government is not coming to act — then I'm thinking of committing suicide,'" he reported.

The farmers are desperate, and have been blowing whistles, pressing motorbike horns, shooting guns and shouting to try to scare the locusts away, he said.

The Express in the U.K. noted biblical scholar Melvin Sandelin has pointed to prophecies about the end times.

"See that you are not troubled, these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilence and earthquakes in various places," he quoted.

That report cited locust swarms "as big as a major city" that were "wreaking havoc in Africa and experts say it could grow 400 times the size by June, spreading to Uganda, South Sudan and further North, threatening the Middle East."

The report continued, "The popular Christian novelist Joel Rosenberg, who in recent years has led trips of evangelical leaders to meet with leaders in the Middle East, said that while he is cautious about saying that prophecies from the Bible are unfolding right now, he takes those forecasts from the Old and New Testaments seriously."

WND previously reported that the U.N. was warning that the impacted regions of Africa "cannot afford another major shock."

Earlier, the AP had reported swarms of billions of insects are destroying crops in Kenya, the country's worst outbreak in 70 years. Somalia and Ethiopia also are are experiencing the same problem.

"There is the risk of a catastrophe," U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said in New York at a briefing at the time.

Lowcock said Monday that 13 million people already face severe food insecurity, with 10 million of them in places affected by locusts.

A medium-size swarm of locusts "in one day can eat the same amount of food as everybody here in the tri-state area, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York," said Keith Cressman, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's senior locust forecasting officer

"So not taking action in time — you can see the consequences," he said, according to AP.

It could get a whole lot worse, the U.N. officials said, if immediate action isn't taken before more rainfall provides more vegetation for new generations of locusts.

Five-hundred times worse, they warned, if unchecked before the dry weather comes.