Worldwide locust plague
Insects devastating crops from Central Asia to America's Midwest

TUESDAY JUNE 19 2001

Locust army marches on its stomach

FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW AND OLIVER AUGUST IN BEIJING

PLAGUES of locusts are devastating crops from Central Asia to the American Midwest, sending farmers to the book of Exodus for salvation.
Not since the Egyptians incurred the wrath of God have so many locusts had their day. A billion-strong army is on the move, stretching far beyond the more normal swarming grounds of Africa and the Middle East and threatening central Eurasia’s arable land in a pincer movement from each end of the Caspian Sea.

In China, hundreds of thousands of ducks are being flown to the northwest where locusts are taking over vast dried-out grasslands — in the worst affected areas of Xinjiang province up to 10,000 inhabit one square metre.

The ducks are trained by government handlers to feed on the locusts — they can reportedly eat a pound of them a day — and are then flown to the afflicted region. The Government says it is more environmentally friendly than using planes to spray pesticides.

Southern Russia’s worst plague of locusts in 40 years is meanwhile advancing north by several miles a day and will start spreading ten times faster if not contained within a week, officials have said.

Yesterday the swarm was confined to a 170,000-acre swath of farmland in Dagestan near the Caspian Sea — an area about twice the size of the Isle of Wight — but it had destroyed 30,000 acres of wheat and was eating everything in its path, making the situation critical, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow.

The insects have hopped and walked inland from the Kuma River estuary like grasshoppers. But experts called to the scene said that they would grow wings within a week, if allowed to, and would then be able to fly up to 30 miles a day.

In America, too, an agricultural emergency has been declared in Utah, where the “Mormon crickets” have so far caused $25 million of damage to crops.

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