China to send army of ducks to fight swarm of crop-eating locusts
BIRDS ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN PESTICIDES, EXPERT SAYS
Chinese duck platoons are waiting to be deployed to neighbouring Pakistan to fight a swarm of crop-eating pests that threaten regional food security.
At least 100,000 ducks are expected to be sent to Pakistan as early as the second half of this year to combat a desert locust outbreak, according to Lu Lizhi, a senior researcher with the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The ducks are “biological weapons” and can be more effective than pesticide, said Lu, who is in charge of the project in tandem with a university in Pakistan.
“One duck is able to eat more than 200 locusts a day,” Lu said on Thursday, citing results of experiments to test the ducks’ searching and predation capabilities. A trial will start in China’s western region of Xinjiang later this year before the ducks are sent to Pakistan, Lu said.
Pest plague
Swarms of desert locusts have been spreading through countries from eastern Africa to South Asia, destroying crops and pastures at a voracious pace. The pest plague, together with unseasonal rain and a scourge of low quality seeds, has hit major crops in Pakistan’s largest producing regions, weighing on its already fragile economy. And it has also migrated into India.
It will be crucial for China, which shares a land border with Pakistan and India, to prevent an invasion. However,
China does have some shield in the form of the Himalaya mountains that stand as a barrier between the Indian subcontinent and the Plateau of Tibet.
A group of Chinese agricultural experts visited Pakistan this week to help control the locust outbreaks as the plague moves eastward.
Locust barbecue anyone?
In other unusual tactics, Pakistan’s government urged its citizens to eat locusts too. People should take advantage of the situation and barbecue locusts or make a curry, according to a local newspaper report.
Pakistan was invaded by the locust swarm last year, which proceeded to lay waste to the country’s cotton crop and is now menacing the wheat harvest.