Photo illustration: 731; Photos, clockwise from top left: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg. Nigel Cattlin/Alamy. Justin McMechan. Tomasz Klejdysz/Alamy. Getty Images. Blickwinkel/Alamy
The Six Pests Coming to Eat Your Crops
As the environment changes, new and resurgent bugs are threatening our food supply.
Climate change is opening up new habitats to old pests, transforming them from a mere nuisance into a growing menace and placing unprecedented threats on the global food supply. Here are six bugs to keep an eye on.
Found in: Africa, Australia, East and South Asia, and North and South America
Eats: Corn, rice, sorghum, sugar cane, wheat
Native to tropical areas of the Western Hemisphere, this invasive species has spread rapidly, causing “major damage to economically important cultivated grasses,” according to CABI, the nonprofit Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International. The pest infested about 15% of Zambia’s corn crop this year. It also contributed to a 4% decline in China’s corn harvest—a difference of about 11 million tons—sending prices skyrocketing and forcing the country to open its strategic stockpile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.