SPECIAL: India faces its most severe locust attack
Western India is facing its most fierce locust attack in nearly three decades, the origins of which lie outside the country and were triggered by weather events attributable to climate change
ON DECEMBER 26 last year, Jugta Ram, a farmer in Barmer, Rajasthan, saw something that freaked him out. “There was a swarm of millions of locusts. It looked like a fast-moving rainy cloud and cast a shadow on a 10 km by 5 km landscape, completely eclipsing the winter sun,” he says. “We tried to scare them away by using traditional methods like making noise by banging empty metallic utensils and creating smoke, but these were ineffective.” The insects attacked his 12-hectare farmland in Tardo Ka Taal village which cost Ram his standing crop of cumin and castor—a loss of R4 lakh, he says. The entire village and a dozen others in the district lost all crops in a day.
What Ram saw was a swarm of desert or yellow locusts (Schistocerca gregaria). He identifies the pest. “It is not the first time I had seen them,” he says, “but the swarm size was mind boggling, not to mention the time of the attack.”
Yellow locusts from Pakistan raid Rajasthan and Gujarat every year. The insect has a lifespan of 90 days. It arrives in July, breeds, and the new generation leaves for Pakistan-Iran by October. The swarms chase greenery and raid regions that have just had monsoon because that is the best time to find food and breed. Usually,
India faces less than 10 swarm attacks annually, but in 2019 there were over 200, says a scientist at the Union government’s Locust Watch Centre (LWC) in Jodhpur, requesting anonymity. There is no official declaration on the number of attacks so far. Apart from the spike in the number of attacks, the size of the swarms was more than twice the usual, say eyewitnesses.
There were two climatic anomalies in India in 2019 that explain the unusual frequency and size of swarm attacks. One, monsoon in
THERE WERE TWO CLIMATIC ANOMALIES IN INDIA IN 2019 THAT EXPLAIN THE UNUSUAL FREQUENCY AND SIZE OF LOCUST SWARMS. ONE, MONSOON IN WESTERN RAJASTHAN ARRIVED A MONTH EARLY. TWO, IT STAYED TILL NOVEMBER
western Rajasthan arrived in May—over one-and-a-half-month early from its usual date of July 1 (see ‘This is a very, very rare attack’ on p22). This created food and breeding conditions for locusts early on and invited them. Two, intermittent rains continued till November ensuring that the locusts keep getting food and do not depart on their usual time of October. More importantly, this extended stay meant that they got to breed thrice—in June, September and December. Locust numbers increase exponentially—20 times in the first generation, 400 times in the second and 16,000 times in the third—which explains the large size of the swarms.
There is no official estimate of crop loss or farmer compensation from Rajasthan, the most severely affected state. “We have taken protective measures in 11 districts that border Pakistan,” says Suwa Lal Jat, joint director in the state’s agriculture department, who is working in coordination with the Union government’s Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine and Storage. These districts are Barmer, Churu, Jodhpur, Nagaur, Jaisalmer, Jalore, Jhunjhunu, Sikar, Sri Ganganagar and Bikaner. The government has sprayed organophosphates (see ‘Pesticides of the last resort’ on p24) on over 370,000 ha—an area thrice the size of Delhi, says Jat.
Gujarat, the other affected state, has been proactive and in January distributed over R31 crore to 11,000 farmers in 285 villages of Banaskantha and Patan—its
only two affected districts. However, it can be safely said that state governments’ delay in acknowledging the problem caused the crisis. The situation should never have become so severe because farmers started reporting about locust swarms as early as May 2019 and the government should have acted sooner. “On May 21, farmers in Jaisalmer complained of crop loss to the district’s LWC,” says Chandrashekhar Sharma, a Jodhpur-based scientist trained in controlling locusts. Farmers reported another big attack in Gudamalani village of Barmer on June 30. Replying to a query in the Lok Sabha on July 31, 2019, the Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar denied any crop damage due to
swarm attacks. However, he accepted that desert locusts were sighted in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Clearly, the state governments and the Centre knew of the threat.
The first time Rajasthan woke up to the problem was in November 2019 when the agriculture department set up 54 teams to survey and monitor and deployed 450 tractormounted sprayers in affected districts. LWCs also deployed 45 such vehicles. But swarms had already had three generations by then. Moreover, the government infrastructure was barely adequate. There are 10 LWCs in Rajasthan and Gujarat but three-fourths of the positions are vacant, says the Jodhpur-based scientist. There is also an absolute shortage of sprayers and vehicles to monitor locusts. Barmer has just two spraying machines which are 25 years old and can barely spray pesticides to a height of 3 metres. Similarly, against the requirement 110 vehicles at the 10 LWCS, there are just 45. “At the Barmer-Jaisalmer border, officials had to deploy two