Urgent funding needed to stop locusts destroying crops

Thousands of hectares of farmland in northern and southern regions of Tajikistan would be destroyed this year by locusts unless funding to tackle the problem was made available soon, an official from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told IRIN on Monday. "Having suffered a two year drought, farmers were expecting a good harvest this year, but this has been shattered," FAO emergency coordinator in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, Halka Otto said. "If we don't get to them quickly they will eat everything," she maintained. The agency currently has US $30,000 but estimates that between US $200,000 to US $300,000 was needed in order to save thousands of hectares of land. However, with only 10 days left before the locusts start flying, there was little hope of the additional money being raised in time. Swarms of locusts can cover a 50 km radius daily and eat their way through the same amount of land making for yet another devastating harvest in the impoverished drought-stricken nation. "Crops have been developing well according to assessments. If we don't act now they will be left with nothing," Otto maintained. According to the FAO, locusts are expected to infest around 40,000 hectares this year in Tajikistan, up from an earlier estimate of 10,000 hectares. Agriculture experts say a total of 60,000 hectares of land needs to be treated in order to curb the problem. The last locust infestation in the Central Asian republic was in 1995 and is expected to reoccur every four to five years. At that time FAO developed a programme and delivered chemicals and equipment to the affected areas. Moroccan locusts are eating away the pastures in the north and south of the country, Otto said. The districts of Shahrtuz, Qabodiyon, Qumsangir and Tursunzoda in the south have already been affected. In the north, more than 1,300 hectares have been affected in the areas of Matcha, Djabor Rasulov, Now and Zaffarabad. Some 1,000 hectares were also destroyed in the central region, she added. "We need to alert the local communities to this problem and ensure they are better prepared for future infestations too," Otto maintained. Although authorities in Dushanbe have started spraying an area of 4,000 hectares, they are still very much dependant on the FAO to deal with the matter, Otto said. But the problem of locusts is not confined to Tajikistan alone and indeed, is fast becoming a regional concern. "We did have some early warning regarding the problem of locusts from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and we know that some have also filtered in from there," she remarked. In neighbouring Afghanistan, a major outbreak of locusts in the northern region - also the bread basket of the country - has already destroyed thousands of hectares of land, making it the worst plague of the pest to hit the country in the last 30 years. The provinces of Baghlan, Konduz and Samanagan have been badly affected and remote mountainous areas have been the hardest to tackle, an FAO statement said on Saturday. In Bandar, 16,000 hectares are reported to be infested and insecticide may have to be air lifted into the area. Mechanical and chemical methods have been adopted in Afghanistan to deal with the Moroccan species of the pests. The mechanical method involves burying newly hatched locusts in ditches and works on small scale eradication. The chemical approach of spraying with pesticides is used when a much larger area needs to be tackled. Some 21,000 hectares in the northern Afghanistan have been treated with chemicals and 81,000 hectares using the mechanical method, the statement said. "Control on this scale in the very difficult circumstances that apply in Afghanistan at the moment is a major achievement and reflects great credit on the coordinated efforts of the villagers themselves, the Afghan plant protection officers who are reported to have done a marvelous job, the NGOs, and the FAO field staff," said FAO expert, Clive Elliott. Working closely with plant protection officers of the Agriculture Ministry of Afghanistan and NGOs, including the Irish NGO Goal, FAO is running an emergency locust campaign aimed at limiting crop damage to the lowest possible level. The Moroccan Locust is found mainly in semi-arid and semi-desert conditions in countries such as Morocco and Algeria in North Africa, and a group of countries in Central Asia including Turkey, Iran, Iraq, some of the ex-Soviet Republics and Afghanistan.