Beware: 400 billion locusts have reached China’s border! The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has issued an early warning.

Release Date:

2020-02-14

On February 11, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) issued a global alert. According to reports, this locust outbreak originated in Africa and then crossed the Red Sea, spreading into Europe and Asia. It has now reached Pakistan and India, leaving China just a step away.

Wherever locusts go, the only word to describe it is “devastating.”

According to FAO statistics, the damage caused by this locust outbreak to crops is the worst in East Africa in the past 25 years and the worst in Kenya in the past 70 years. Meanwhile, Somalia and Ethiopia have directly declared that agricultural production has come to a complete standstill, leaving millions of lives under an unprecedented threat.

FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Semedo issued the sternest warning: “All countries must act in concert without delay; locusts will not wait—they will descend in overwhelming numbers and unleash devastating devastation.”

As for the neighboring countries of Pakistan and India, both are also facing unprecedented pressure.

Pakistan has been hit by a double invasion of African and Iranian locusts, marking the worst locust outbreak the country has seen in 27 years. Pakistani officials stated: Currently, locusts are destroying the food supply of approximately 35,000 people each day; if left unchecked, the country will have nothing to harvest. To this end, Pakistan has declared a state of emergency and deployed hundreds of aircraft for pesticide spraying and pest control; regrettably, one of these aircraft crashed in Rahim Yar Khan during operations.

Like Pakistan, India is suffering an unprecedented onslaught: according to Rajasthan’s finance minister, 400 billion locusts have swarmed the state, destroying vast swathes of crops and threatening to spread to other regions. Indian scholars have predicted that the locust plague could reduce India’s grain production by 30% to 50%, a prospect that has deeply alarmed the Indian government. Indian Prime Minister Modi even took the initiative to extend an olive branch to Pakistan, calling for a ceasefire.

As neighboring countries of China, Pakistan and India—both currently grappling with locust infestations—raise the question of whether these outbreaks pose a threat to China, and how such threats might be prevented and managed. This is an issue that warrants close attention at present. To this end, China Science News interviewed relevant experts from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the College of Life Sciences at Hebei University, and the Institute of Biological Resources and Applications of the Guangdong Academy of Sciences, who provided answers to pertinent questions.