The Old Tes­ta­ment of the Holy Bible tells the sto­ry of Pharaoh re­fus­ing Moses’ en­treaties to re­lease the en­slaved Is­raelites, and God in turn send­ing a se­ries of ten plagues to show his might and pres­sure the Egypt­ian ruler to let his peo­ple go.

The plague of lo­custs was the eight plague that God sent af­ter he had sent a plague of hail, ac­cord­ing to the Bible.

“They cov­ered all the ground un­til it was black. They de­voured all that was left af­ter the hail—every­thing grow­ing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Noth­ing green re­mained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt,” Ex­o­dus 10:15 states.

But for farmer De­von Ous­man this rav­aging by lo­custs is not just some bib­li­cal tale told to church­go­ers

It has been his life.

‘The bread­fruit and chataigne trees are now like dry sticks. I nev­er saw a tree so clean in my life. The lo­custs ate every­thing and the chances are that fruit will just drop off it may not stay,” Ous­man told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Ous­man’s farm in Princes Town is one of many farms in South Trinidad that have been at­tacked by lo­custs re­cent­ly.

Ous­man, 37, has seen lo­custs be­fore, but he nev­er saw them reach this far.

“Grow­ing up here in Princes Town I nev­er saw this amount of lo­custs be­fore here. I saw them in Moru­ga be­fore,” Ous­man ex­plained.

The farmer said his fam­i­ly has fields in both Princes Town and Moru­ga.

The fam­i­ly does var­i­ous crops in­clud­ing man­goes, pom­me­cythere, cas­sa­va ed­does, peas and paw paw.

The lo­cust ac­tions are giv­ing the farm­ers and added headache, Ous­man said.

“Once they de­stroy the leaves that ham­pers the crop from pro­duc­ing,” he said.

“It de­lays the har­vest­ing pe­ri­od and that it­self puts ad­di­tion­al strain on the farmer be­cause you have to re-fer­tilise. The amount of mon­ey you spend on that crop you lose. It comes like you grad­u­al­ly lose that be­cause you are not sure to get that crop go­ing,” Ous­man said.

Apart from the de­lays, Ous­man said in some in­stances the lo­custs ac­tu­al­ly kill the plants.

“Once the lo­cust feeds on the leaves it ham­pers that fruit it ham­pers get­ting the nu­tri­ents to that fruit to ma­ture that fruit so you end up get­ting pre­ma­ture fruit. In some cas­es you will lose the fruit,” he said.

The rav­aging by the lo­custs may in turn af­fect two of the up­com­ing re­li­gious hol­i­days in this coun­try.

Apart from the chataigne which is a sta­ple for the Di­vali sea­son, Ous­man said the lo­custs may al­so cause dif­fi­cul­ties to get peas for Christ­mas.

“I’m not fore­see­ing a peas crop. We are at the end of Oc­to­ber and peas is sup­posed to start flow­er­ing next two weeks in or­der to get that peas to come in for the end­ing of No­vem­ber in­to Christ­mas and I am not see­ing that,” he said.

Lo­custs al­so love plan­tain, Ous­man said.

Ous­man said a field of plan­tain is usu­al­ly around $25,000-$40,000.

“Imag­ine in­vest­ing in that and you lose that en­tire thing. And you still have to pay the bank. And you still have to pro­vide for your fam­i­ly,” he said.

Apart from Moru­ga and Princes Town, there have been re­ports of lo­custs in­vad­ing Debe, Bar­rack­pore and New Grant as they have now moved from res­i­den­tial ar­eas in South Trinidad to South West­ern coastal ar­eas.

Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad said he an­tic­i­pates that the lo­custs have de­stroyed over a mil­lion dol­lars in crops.

“We are hear­ing of huge loss­es and it is spread­ing,” Ram­per­sad said.

“If you are to do an as­sess­ment $15,000 a acre by al­most 100 acres,” he said.

Ram­per­sad said the lo­custs are most like­ly to ex­ac­er­bate the pres­sure fac­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

“We are ap­proach­ing the Christ­mas and one of the crops down there is sor­rel, which is a favourite,” Ous­man said.

Sor­rel is al­so a sta­ple of the Christ­mas sea­son.

Agri­cul­tur­al ex­ten­sion of­fi­cers from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture have been track­ing the lo­cust since Au­gust with the in­ten­tion of de­stroy­ing their breed­ing grounds.

Cur­rent­ly, 28 egg nests are mon­i­tored year­ly by the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry but there are con­cerns that the re­cent in­clement weath­er may have split up the swarms.

The track­ing teams have said that the lo­custs have made a cir­cle and would nor­mal­ly re­turn to their nest­ing grounds.

“We will see some pres­sure in agri­cul­ture and we will con­tin­ue see­ing that,” Ous­man said.

“It is a lot of things farm­ers are be­ing faced with,” he said.

Ous­man said farm­ers have not got­ten a fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance even in the face of COVID-19.

“I have cred­it with ADB and I can say that I have not got­ten any de­fer­ral for COVID. Farm­ers had to face the full brunt through­out the year. And this lo­cust sit­u­a­tion is an added pres­sure,” he said.