Indians hopping mad as locusts decimate crops

New Delhi – From deploying drones and fire trucks to banging utensils and blaring loud music, India is experimenting with ways to battle a new wave of locust attacks that have alarmed farmers.

Millions of locusts have engulfed India’s seven heartland states, including the western desert of Rajasthan, and threaten vegetable and pulse crops such as lentils and beans.

“We have never ever seen what we have in the past six months in India ... never in the history,” said Bhagirath Choudhary, director of the New Delhi-based South Asia Biotechnology Centre, an agriculture think-tank.

Farmers salvaged their wheat and oilseed crops from a previous locust scourge late last year.

But the fresh swarms have arrived at a time when the government is trying to contain the spread of the coronavirus and reeling from the economic fallout associated with pandemic restrictions.

India’s lockdown introduced in late March has pushed millions into hunger and poverty as they lost their livelihoods and left farmers unable to harvest, bag or move their crops because of labour shortages and logistical challenges.

The country is battling its worst desert locust outbreak in decades, with swarms radiating through much of the western states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, the central states of Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, and Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in the north. States in India’s east and south have been on alert, too.

The last major locust surge was in 1993, when heavy rains created favourable breeding conditions for the insects along the IndiaPakistan border.

Experts say it is rare for locusts to move into the nondesert areas of India.

Rudimentary efforts to scare the pests away include mounting tractors with insecticide sprayers or banging steel pots and plates, while others have lit fireworks or played loud music in the middle of their fields.

Locust swarms can fly up to 150km a day and the adult insects can consume roughly their own weight in fresh food each day. A small swarm can eat enough food to feed 35 000 people in a day. – Reuters