Battered by coronavirus and swine fever, is China ready for locusts?
- Forestry and grassland agency puts out alert on threat from most voracious of insects
- Government goes for strategy of monitoring, prevention if possible, and control
China has stepped up the alert in case swarms of locusts that have laid waste to agricultural land in Pakistan, India and East Africa find their way across its borders, a government agency said on Monday.
“Although experts believe that the risk of swarms entering the country and causing disaster is relatively low, [China] will be hampered in tracking the locusts by a lack of monitoring techniques and little knowledge of migration patterns [if they do] invade,” the National Forestry and Grassland Administration said in an emergency notice on its website.
Beijing has convened a task force to watch for, control and – if possible – prevent the arrival of the voracious insects. The government also planned to hold a meeting of experts this month to discuss and coordinate nationwide swarm prevention efforts, including an emergency warning system.
While the Chinese government said the locust threat was small, alerts have been stepped up since mid-February, when the agriculture ministry decided to track the locusts’ movements and study ways of keeping them out.
Agriculture in China had a difficult year in 2019, hit by the crop-gobbling fall armyworms which spread across a million hectares of farmland, as well as African swine fever that halved the country’s herd of 440 million pigs through preventive culling.
A locust swarm could drag China’s coronavirus-stricken economy down farther. More than 80,000 people have been infected with the virus which has killed more than 2,900, bringing many of the nation’s industries to a near halt, Chinese authorities said on Monday.