Locust swarm: Coordination with Pakistan crucial for containing attacks, says key official

An interview with KL Gurjar, deputy director of the Locust Warning Organisation.

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As India battles the novel coronavirus pandemic and reels from the humanitarian crisis caused by the two-month-long lockdown to contain its spread, a new threat has emerged in Northern and Central India: a swarm of locusts.

Locusts are short-horned grasshoppers that devour crops and other vegetation. They sometimes cause so much destruction, they could threaten a country’s food supplies. The insects could pose a “severe risk” to India’s agriculture this year, the United Nations has warned

Since the second week of April, swarms of locusts have been sighted in parts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. According to experts, this is the worst locust outbreak in India in 26 years. In Jaipur, social-media users posted pictures and videos emerged of locusts in residential localities.

On May 26, locusts were spotted in parts of eastern Maharashtra including Amravati district, Wardha and parts of Nagpur. On May 27, the Delhi government issued an advisory on preventive measures to deal with the locusts.

So far, the insects have been sighted in 41 of India’s 739 districts, said KL Gurjar, the deputy director of the Locust Warning Organisation under the Ministry of Agriculture, in an interview to Scroll.in.

Locust sightings at this time of the year were unusual, Gurjar said.

To prepare for this, the Ministry of Agriculture said on May 27 that it would deploy drones to spray insecticides on fields in states that reported locust attacks. The ministry also stated that sprinkling operations were conducted in 303 locations spread over more than 47,000 hectares till May 27 in 21 districts of Rajasthan, 18 in Madhya Pradesh, two in Gujarat and one in Punjab.