Gujarat digs in as rains bring locust threat

AHMEDABAD: The Central government has sent teams armed with pesticides and specialist equipment to Gujarat after a U.N. warning that swarms 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," Agricultural Secretary P.K. Mishra told reporters on Thursday.   

Officials in Gujarat said they were preparing to battle any invasion by desert locusts.    Gujarat, which is a major producer of the country's groundnut oilseeds crop, has just begun sowing 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," said the agriculture director for the state, R. Serasia.   

Two control rooms in northern Gujarat had been set up, but no insects had yet reached India, officials said. 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.   

Officials said grasslands and fields in the Kutch, Banaskantha, Patan, Porbander, Rajkot and Jamnagar regions were the most vulnerable. "The epidemic may require emergency aerial spraying,"said Avinash Kumar, a senior agriculture official.  

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".