At a time when widespread Covid-19 pandemic is already making a difficult situation for the farmers, locusts are adding more to difficulty in lives of the farmers in Sirmandi village in Jodhpur. Recently, the fields in the village had been exposed to a large swarm of locusts, damaging so many crops including onion, millet, jowar, pearl and others.
With the invasion raising the concerns of the farmers of Sirmandi village, they are bound to demand neutralization and spraying pesticides in the area on time to reduce further the losses by the attack.
Last month, Jaiselmer’s district faced the swarms of locusts from across the border, and it was neutralized in the Tanot area. Apart from it, a few swarms were also destroyed in Sri Ganganagar’s Hindumalkot. After this, Jaisalmer district collector Namit Mehta requested information from the state locust control department and the agriculture department regarding the recurrence of locust attack in May. He also ordered some necessary insecticides, a sprayer tractor and other vehicles beforehand to deal with the attack.
According to a report, these pests ae migratory and normally migrate to India during the period between July and October. However, we had already witnessed their early arrival through India-Pakistan border in April itself. The destructive attack degraded acres of rabi crops in many western states including Gujarat and Rajasthan in December- January.
In February, a swarm of locusts seized Fazilka district in Punjab and created a situation of massive destruction for the crops and farmlands. A multi-department operation had to be carried out by the district administration to control the situation. The pests perforated the state via Rajasthan. While the threat was taken control without causing any damage to the crops, an estimate of 400-500 tonnes of pesticides took to eliminate the locusts.
