Why in the news: Swarms of locusts descended on parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, destroying crops and triggering panic.
Facts
- The locusts, known as tiddis locally, have wreaked havoc on standing crops of castor, cumin, jatropha, cotton, and potato, and fodder grass in around 20 talukas.
- Among the four districts, Banaskantha is the worst affected.
- Gujarat has not witnessed such an invasion of locusts since 1993-94 .
- It is being said that the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned about a massive locust attack in South Asia covering Pakistan and India.
- The farmers are using age old techniques like beating drums and vessels to scare the locusts away without much success.
- Originally, the locusts emerged in February 2019 from Sudan and Eritrea on Africa’s Red Sea Coast and travelled through Saudi Arabia and Iran to enter Pakistan, where they invaded the Sindh province and from there they moved into Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Losses
- A small swarm of the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria), a polyphagous feeder (eating a large variety of plants), eats on average “as much food in one day as about 10 elephants, 25 camels or 2500 people.
- According to the locust division of the Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine and Storage Faridabad , locusts damaged crops worth Rs 10 crore during the 1926-31 plague cycle. During the 1940-46 and 1949-55 locust plague cycles, the damage was estimated at Rs 2 crore each, and at Rs 50 lakh during the last locust plague cycle (1959-62).
About Locust Warning Organization (LWO)
- Government of India has established Locust Warning Organization (LWO) under ICAR in 1939.
- The organisation monitors locust situation/activities over an area 2.00 lakh sq km of the scheduled desert area in parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana.
- Its field headquarters is at Jodhpur.
About Desert Locust
- According to the FAO, the Desert Locust is one of about a dozen species of short-horned grasshoppers (Acridoidea) that are known to change their behavior and form swarms of adults or bands of hoppers (wingless nymphs).
- The swarms that form can be dense and highly mobile. The Latin name for Desert Locust is Schistocerca gregaria (Forskal). During quiet periods (known as recessions) Desert Locusts are usually restricted to the semi-arid and arid deserts of Africa, the Near East and South-West Asia that receive less than 200 mm of rain annually. This is an area of about 16 million square kilometres, consisting of about 30 countries.
- During plagues, Desert Locusts may spread over an enormous area of some 29 million square kilometres, extending over or into parts of 60 countries. This is more than 20% of the total land surface of the world.
- During plagues, the Desert Locust has the potential to damage the livelihood of a tenth of the world’s population.
