Ministry Set to Curb Locust Plague

Although conditions are right for a locust plague to continue this summer, the Ministery of Agriculture promised Sunday that the insects will be brought under control within the next two months.

By Saturday, locusts had swarmed over 3.66 million hectares of mostly uncultivated land in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and nine other provinces and municipalities including Henan, Shandong, Hebei and Tianjin, the ministry's statistics indicated.

Zhu Enlin, a ministry official, said unseasonably warm winter and chronic drought since early spring has fuelled the locust outbreak.

"Infestations of locusts, if not curbed, will pose a severe threat to China's summer and autumn crops," said the division director of the National Agro-Technical Extension and Service Centre under the ministry.

Fortunately, locusts are now only blighting crops in sporadic fields on the edge of the uncultivated land, Zhu said.

Entomologists warn that locusts, whose usual habitat is dry wasteland, may move on to farmland if they grow too dense.

They were not optimistic about this summer's situation.

Already, the density of locusts has reached 5,000 per square metre in some badly hit regions in Shandong, Hebei and Tianjin, according to ministry sources.

An emergency meeting was convened in Shandong on Saturday to intensify and co-ordinate the insect-killing programme, Zhu said.

Technically speaking, China, whose earliest locust disasters date back more than 2,700 years, has accumulated enough experience and expertise to eradicate locusts, Zhu said.

So far, eight crop-dusting aircraft and 50,000 people have sprayed insecticide on 800,000 hectares of land, and the ministry has urged localities to destroy locusts in their breeding areas and stop them from migrating to farmlands.

However, lack of funds may hinder eradication efforts, Zhu said. About 30 million yuan (US$3.61 million) has been allocated for this summer's locust prevention work. However, Zhu said another 30 million yuan (US$3.61 million) is needed.



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