JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Economist - Use safe methods to control locusts

by

Radhica De Silva
1617 days ago
20210224
Thousands of locusts on the wall of a house at Cachipe Village, Moruga on Monday.

Thousands of locusts on the wall of a house at Cachipe Village, Moruga on Monday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

 

As swarms of lo­custs con­tin­ue to spread fur­ther in­land from the forests of Moru­ga and Ce­dros, calls are be­ing made for the gov­ern­ment to use en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly safe avi­a­tion meth­ods to con­trol the pests.

For a sec­ond week, new­ly hatched hop­pers con­tin­ued to move out of the Moru­ga forests and en­ter res­i­dents’ homes at Cacvhipe Vil­lage in Moru­ga. 

Lo­cust Erad­i­ca­tion Unit of­fi­cers have re­fused to spray near the res­i­dents’ homes say­ing the chem­i­cals will af­fect pets.

But speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, agri­cul­ture econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said the loss of for­est cov­er through un­reg­u­lat­ed land use, changes in an­nu­al rain­fall cy­cles as well as cli­mate change, had caused the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the in­sects.

Say­ing there must be prop­er man­age­ment in the con­trol of the lo­custs, Ma­haraj not­ed that some coun­tries have start­ed cap­tur­ing the lo­custs and us­ing them as live­stock feeds and or­gan­ic fer­til­iz­er.

He called on the gov­ern­ment to col­lab­o­rate in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to find mod­ern strate­gies to erad­i­cate the pests.

 “In 2019 the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture said that his gov­ern­ment was col­lab­o­rat­ing with the gov­ern­ment of Ar­genti­na, which he said had some suc­cess in con­trol­ling and re­duc­ing the in­va­sions and preva­lence of the pest,” Ma­haraj re­vealed.

How­ev­er, he said lit­tle came out of that meet­ing.

“ There is no known in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main on the out­come of the col­lab­o­ra­tion, method­olo­gies and strate­gies to be adopt­ed to man­age the pest or even con­sul­ta­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­or­di­na­tion of the com­mon com­mu­ni­ties usu­al­ly af­fect­ed,” he said.

While Lo­cust Erad­i­ca­tion Units from the coun­ties of Vic­to­ria and St Patrick have been try­ing to dec­i­mate the in­sects in their nest­ing and hop­per stages, Ma­haraj said more mod­ern strate­gies could be uti­lized.

“We are see­ing the con­tin­ued in­va­sion of the lo­custs in Moru­ga and ad­join­ing ar­eas in Pe­nal, Tabaquite and Rio Claro. While some may ad­vo­cate for avi­a­tion con­trol such as what was used by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed, there has since been the pro­lif­er­a­tion of res­i­den­tial and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment around those lands and sim­i­lar­ly in the south-east­ern re­gion,” Ma­haraj said.

Be­cause of this, the ap­pli­ca­tion of pes­ti­cides and oth­er chem­i­cal in­ter­ven­tions aeri­al­ly will be harm­ful to hu­man health, wa­ter­cours­es and wildlife.

Ma­haraj said us­age must be zoned and added this method may al­so be fi­nan­cial­ly un­fea­si­ble.

“The pre­vi­ous­ly de­fined agri­cul­tur­al zones in this coun­try have since fad­ed with the dec­i­ma­tion of the sec­tor over the years,” he not­ed. Ma­haraj said mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy of­fers the use of drones in agri­cul­ture. He said there were sev­er­al types of un­manned aer­i­al sys­tems (UAS) used for spot­ting nest­ing ar­eas.

He said the use of UAS can help with crop pro­duc­tion as well as re­duc­ing prae­di­al lar­ce­ny through farm se­cu­ri­ty and sur­veil­lance.

He al­so called on the gov­ern­ment to use the lo­custs as live­stock feeds.

“Sim­i­lar to the ideas of uti­liz­ing the plagues of Sar­gas­sum sea­weed as an al­ter­na­tive to syn­thet­ic fer­til­iz­ers, the cap­ture and con­ver­sion of the lo­custs as a form of live­stock feed and fer­til­iz­er is al­so a wel­comed op­por­tu­ni­ty es­pe­cial­ly at the com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el. In raw form, some wild birds, as well as chick­ens and ducks do con­sume the lo­custs. It again calls for vi­sion and lead­er­ship from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in guid­ing these pos­si­bil­i­ties,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat said lo­cust erad­i­ca­tion fell un­der the purview of Chief Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cer Dr Si­mone Ti­tus who said she will is­sue a re­sponse to­day.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored