Locust attack in the fields of North Gujarat and Kutch has had the farmers and the government on its toes. The locust invasion from Pakistan might be due to changing weather and wind patterns. The locusts are destroying the region’s major crops such as potato, castor, fennel, cumin, cotton, and jatropha.
Crux of the Matter
Kutch, Banaskantha, Sabarkantha, Patan and Mehsana districts of Gujarat are facing a massive swarm of locusts from the Pakistan border. This is the worst massive locust invasion since 1994.
The invasion was alerted by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Locust Warning Organisation (LWO) Jodhpur. They predicted the swarms’ trajectory into Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Farmers resorted to age-old techniques of playing drums and tolling utensils to scare the locusts away. They vainly played loud music and burned rubber tyres to flee the locusts.
While the farmers allege late and little action from the side of the government, it later sent around 11 teams to deal with the matter.
State Agriculture Minister, RC Faldu said that spraying insecticide was not an option has it would have damaged the crop and the habitat that is dependent on it.
Curiopedia
The Bombay locust has only exhibited swarming behaviour in India. The most recent plague lasted from 1901 to 1908 and the last recorded swarm was in 1927, since when the patterns of agriculture in the region have changed. When swarming, the insects spent the cool period from November to March in forested areas in the Western Ghats. In May, when the monsoon winds had started to blow, they moved northeastwards into Gujarat, Indore, Nagpur, Hyderabad and the Eastern Ghats, by then covering an area of 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 sq mi). If the rains failed to arrive in June, the plague continued to move with the wind, sometimes as far as Orissa, Bihar and Bengal. More Info
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