It resembled a scene from a horror movie: swarms of locusts so dense they sometimes block out the sun and when they land, their collective weight can break tree branches.

This scene played itself out earlier  in 2021 in parts of the Eastern Cape including areas around Graaff-Reinet, Cradock and Middelburg, where billions of brown locusts wreaked havoc as the critters wiped out entire crop fields in a matter of hours...