UN agency warns of threatening locust activity along both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border

NEW DELHI: It is time for farmers and the agricultural sector to prepare well for “threatening locust activity” that can cause heavy damage to crop production.

“In southwest Asia, heavy rains on the southern coast of Iran where swarms were laying eggs, which should allow favourable conditions for two generations of breeding that could cause a considerable increase in locust numbers. Residual adult groups and swarms are still present along both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border while some swarms have moved into adjacent areas to the north,” said the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Already locusts have caused tremendous havoc in regions of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

The Pakistan government has declared a national emergency to eliminate the attacking swarms of desert locust in Punjab after wiping it out in Sindh, the media reported on Saturday.

It may be noted that just recently a BJP legislator entered the Rajasthan Assembly building with a decorated basket containing locusts here to protest against the Congress-led government’s alleged apathy towards the state’s farmers who have suffered crop losses due to locust attacks. The innovative and unconventional form of protest by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Bihari Lal caught everyone’s attention as soon he entered the Assembly building with a basket on his head. However, all were left stunned after he showed the basket –which looked more like a ‘corporate gift’ – containing locusts that have been creating havoc on the agricultural fields in western Rajasthan. Farmers in 11 out of 33 districts of Rajasthan have suffered huge losses due to what is being said as the worst locust attacks on agricultural fields in the last three decades.

According to FAO,

“Locusts and grasshoppers are acridids, i.e. short-horned insects belonging to a Family called Acrididae in the Orthoptera Order, which also gathers crickets and long-horned grasshoppers. Insects belonging to the Orthoptera Order can be readily identified by their large hind legs which enable them to jump.”

“This gregarious behavior is reinforced by a synchronization of the biological events: mating, egg-laying, hatching, fledging. Thus, eggs hatch at the same moment from dense egg-beds and the newly appeared hoppers form immediately primary bands; after fledging, the immature adults will form swarms,” states the agency.

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