Saudis hunt locusts for food

Saudis waited for government aircraft to halt spraying locusts in their region and rushed out to gather the insects for a delicious meal despite official warnings that they could be poisonous, a newspaper in the Gulf Kingdom reported on Friday.

Large swarms of locusts have invaded Saudi Arabia over the past few days, prompting the government to deploy a large number of aircraft to spray insecticides to destroy them and save crop, some of which has already been badly damaged.

In Baha city and other southern parts of Saudi Arabia, residents were seen in large numbers picking the live and dead locusts and placing them in bags.

“Residents of Baha rushed out to gather as many locusts as possible despite warnings by the ministry of agriculture,” the Arabic language daily Sharq said.

“Some of them picked the locusts for consumption as a delicious meal while others gathered them in big bags to sell them.”

Locusts are a favorite dish for Saudis in many areas in the Kingdom despite repeated warnings by the Ministry and the National Centre for Fighting Locusts that eating them could be dangerous after they feed on crop sprayed with insecticides.

One way to eat locusts in the Kingdom, with a population of nearly 30 million, is to expose them to the sun for a few days until they become dry and hard before they are salted and eaten like nuts.

Locust bags are also sold in bazaars and other special markets in the Moslem nation, where a five-kg bag of live locusts is sold for SR400 (Dh396).

The locust season in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil supplier, usually starts late in the year and continues for three months.

One of the largest locust bazaars in the Kingdom is located in the central town of Buraydah, where hundreds of vendors gather every day to sell different sizes of locust bags. Daily auctions are also held at the market.
 
 

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