MILAN—When farmer Rita Tolu saw “a big black wave storming across the horizon and taking over the fields” in April, she knew that little of her dried fodder and alfalfa crops would be left in the following days.
Tolu, 40, and other farmers working the central areas of the Italian island of Sardinia have seen swarms of billions of locusts ravage their land in the worst such invasion for more than three decades.
The invasion is projected to affect an area of around 60,000 hectares this year, double that of 2021 and compared with just 2,000 hectares in 2019.
Tolu said that many of her colleagues “might have to shut down their businesses” as the plague of locusts adds to the impact of drought and rising fuel costs on farmers….