India on alert as locusts from Pakistan threaten farms

NEWDELHI:India is on the alert for crop-munching desert locusts, which according to a UN warning, pose a “severe” risk to the country’s agriculture this year, as a top pest-monitoring agency flagged signs of an early-thanusual summer invasion of the species of grasshoppers from across Pakistan.

This has prompted the Union agriculture ministry to consider importing equipment from the UK, apart from deploying drones, satellite-derived tools, special fire-tenders and sprayers at preidentified border locations.

Protocols are in place for India to hold videoconferencing meetings with authorities in Pakistan for joint strategies, an agriculture ministry official said requesting anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media. Locusts can fly up to 150 km daily and a one square km swarm can eat as much food as 35,000 people in terms of weight in a single day, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s Desert Locust Information Service bulletin.

A surge in locust attacks since last year is being attributed to favourable breeding weather caused by a large number of cyclones in East Africa. India, China and Pakistan face the most risk in Asia, according to the UN. Pakistan has already declared an agricultural emergency, according to the official cited above.

Locust attacks are known to cause a considerable drop in agricultural output. The alert on Wednesday came after a month of monitoring by the locust warning office, a wing under the agriculture ministry’s directorate of plant protection. Their field agents spotted clouds of the insects in mid-April in Rajasthan’s Sri Ganganagar and Jaisalmer districts. Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar consulted representatives of the pesticide industry on May 13, a second plant quarantine department official said. Tomar reviewed broad measures to fight off infestations. The ministry now plans to import some equipment from the UK. India is scheduling more talks with Pakistani representatives during the entire June to September kharif (summer-sown) season, said KL Gurjar, deputy director at India’s directorate of plant protection.

“One large swarm can cover several districts,” said JN Thakur, a former chief of locust monitoring at the agriculture ministry. The Union government has decided to conduct awareness campaigns and training for farmers and officials from Rajasthan and Punjab.