All over eastern Australia farmers are struggling to cope with great swarms of locusts. But where do these plagues come from?The insect swarms could not have come at a worse time for the farmers, who were only just recovering from bushfires and the worst drought to hit the country in 100 years. Unfortunately, it is precisely the conditions that were helping them to recover - a little rain, the growth of new shoots - that have also created the locust problem. "The rain causes the crops to grow and the grass to grow - there's the [locusts'] food," Philip Blades of Blades Biological, a company supplying insects for education and research, explained to BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "Then the rain produces damp soil to lay their egg tubes in... that has to be moist otherwise they'll dehydrate. "So damp, growth of food, then they'll bloom. Once the food's gone they'll have to move on." This need to move on is what triggers the swarms. Every day they take off at about 11 in the morning and fly 30-50km (20-30 miles). The horror of the plagues is nothing new. In the Bible, Exodus describes how God sent the locusts to punish Egypt: "When it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts. "And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; for they covered the face of the whole Earth, so that the land was darkened." Modern-day plagues are no less frightening. "They came in literally like a black haze at about 12 o'clock, and by three or four in the afternoon they were everywhere, eating the crops out," New South Wales farmer Phil Thompson told Outlook. "By the following morning the crops were gone." Mr Thompson said he had been set to harvest 140
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