China steps up locust prevention as swarms ravage crops in neighbouring India and Pakistan
- Beijing has allocated 1.4 billion yuan (US$200 million) for the prevention and control of pests, including locusts and fall armyworms
- UN experts say China unlikely to suffer major infestation because Himalaya mountains act as ‘natural barrier’ for locusts in India and Pakistan
China has heightened prevention and control measures to protect its cropland from desert locusts that have ravaged India and Pakistan, despite assurances that the likelihood of a large-scale attack was marginal.
Locusts, which decimate almost all green vegetation including crops and trees, have swarmed swathes of agricultural land on the India-Pakistan border, an area identified as a global hotspot for the pests by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
However, officials at the FAO have played down the threat, saying a huge plague of locusts was unlikely.
“There is no threat to China by the desert locust because of a) the wind direction and b) they cannot cross the Himalaya Mountains because they are too tall and the air is too cold – so this is a natural barrier,” said FAO’s senior locust forecasting officer Keith Cressman by email.
