Indian digs in as rains bring locust plague threat
Pastor Dale Morgan
Indian digs in as rains bring locust plague threat*
06 Jul 2007 13:17:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
13:15 06Jul07 -UPDATE 1- By Rupam Jain Nair
AHMEDABAD, India, July 6 (Reuters) - India has sent teams armed with
pesticides and specialist equipment to the western state of Gujarat
after a U.N. warning that billions of locusts could cross the Indian
Ocean from the Horn of Africa.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a statement on
Wednesday that heavy rainfall will create favourable breeding conditions
for locusts until October along both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border.
"We have taken adequate measures and sent teams to Gujarat with
chemicals and equipment to prevent any damage," Indian Farm Secretary
P.K. Mishra told reporters on Thursday.
Officials in Gujarat said they were preparing to battle any invasion by
desert locusts.
The farm ministry said locust migration from Africa was not likely to be
a major threat.
"So far only scattered and localised presence of locust has been
reported from Gujarat," a ministry statement said.
"No reports of locust spotting have been received from Rajasthan."
It said the surveillance teams had found small populations of locusts in
three villages in Kutch district in Gujarat.
"There is adequate stock of pesticides and equipment for the control
operations if such a need arises in future," the ministry said.
Gujarat produces a major part of India's groundnut oilseeds crop, the
sowing of which has just begun with the arrival of annual monsoon rains.
It is also a key cotton producer.
"Villages have been alerted, trenches are being dug, and training to use
empty vessels or canisters to make a loud noise has been imparted to
shoo away swarms of locusts," the state's agriculture director, R.
Serasia, told Reuters.
The FAO statement said desert locusts had in the past crossed the Indian
Ocean on monsoon winds as part of a natural migration cycle.
Swarms from Ethiopia and northern Somalia could arrive in India and
Pakistan "in the next days", it said.
Gujarat officials said grasslands and fields in the state's Kutch,
Banaskantha, Patan, Porbander, Rajkot and Jamnagar regions were the most
vulnerable.
"The epidemic may require emergency aerial spraying," a senior
agriculture official, Avinash Kumar, said.
Gujarat was hit by a minor locust attack in 1993, when houses and fields
were infested in several districts.
The FAO statement said that a "very small part of an average swarm eats
as much food in one day as about 2,500 people".
(Additional reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI) ((Writing by
Biman Mukherji, editing by Mark Williams and John Mair))