Locust invasion

The insects, having decimated thousands of hectares of crops in Russia, are now a serious threat to agriculture in China and in America

MOSCOW - A billion-strong army of locusts is on the move, stretching far beyond its more normal swarming grounds of Africa and the Middle East, devastating crops from Central Asia to the American Mid-west.

The arable lands of central Eurasia are being threatened as the locusts swarm in a pincer movement from each end of the Caspian Sea, the Times of London said yesterday.

Southern Russia's worst plague in 40 years was advancing north by several kilometres a day and officials said it would start spreading 10 times faster if it was not contained within a week.

The Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow said the situation was critical in Dagestan, where a swarm was confined to a 70,000-ha swathe of farmland near the Caspian Sea.

The insects had already destroyed 12,000 ha of wheat and were eating everything in its path.

The insects have hopped and walked inland from the Kuma River estuary like grasshoppers. But experts on the scene said that they would grow wings within a week, if allowed to, and would then be able to fly up to 50 km a day.

China, in the meantime, has turned to 'duck soldiers' to contain the problem, said the Times.

Hundreds of thousands of ducks are being recruited on farms in fertile, eastern China and flown by aircraft to the north-west, where their foes are sweeping across the vast grasslands.

In the worst affected areas of Xinjiang province, up to 10,000 locusts inhabit one square metre of land.

The ducks are trained to feed on the locusts - they can reportedly eat more than 2 kg a day.

Using the ducks is environmentally friendly but the official China Daily newspaper says 1 million ha of land had also been sprayed with pesticides.

'Over the past three months, continuous drought has been affecting over 20 provinces...and regions and provides a good environment for the breeding of migratory locusts, which usually lay their eggs on saline-alkaline waste land,' the paper reported.

'Currently these developing locusts, called hoppers because they have not yet grown wings, live on reeds and pose no harm to crops.

'But in just two to three weeks, they will be fully grown, when they will fly to fields and devour wheat and rice, giving the country's agriculture a destructive blow. At that stage it is almost impossible to control them,' said the daily.

Across the Pacific, in the US, an agricultural emergency has been declared in the state of Utah, where mormon crickets damaged crops estimated at US$25 million (S$45 million), said the Times of London.