This Proposal was requested by the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the U N. I prepared the Proposal without payment. FAO has never even acknowledge receipt. The plan is dead or rather still-born since it was never alive.

P S Nov 2008

To download the complete proposal click here.

To download Timeline click here.

A Desert Locust Centre for Operational Development
Summary
For approaching half a century the Desert Locust has been in Recession, broken by Upsurges at roughly decade intervals that threatened to develop into full plagues. Inevitably the campaigns to combat those Upsurges were run by officers without previous campaign experience and, equally inevitably, the campaigns were all very inefficient and mostly ineffective as well. More than of half a billion $US at current rate was spent and well in excess of 10 million litres of concentrated pesticide applied during each of the major Upsurges.
The only way to overcome the lack of campaign direction experience is to establish a small cadre of officers who will advise and help to run every campaign. However, to be effective those Officers must have already established a working relationship with the national Officer in charge of a campaign. Further, those national senior officers must understand what is required both technically and organizationally for effective campaigns of various types.
These, and other related problems, could be tackled by establishing a Desert Locust Centre for Operational Development in a recession area country. The technical staff would form the cadre to assist in every campaign. The working relationship between the Centre’s officers and the Seniors of the locust affected countries would be established primarily by Workshops at the Centre, where the technical, logistical and organizational problems of campaigns would be studied.