RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Farm­ers who have suf­fered loss­es be­cause of the un­usu­al swarms of Moru­ga grasshop­pers should be com­pen­sat­ed by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture says Re­tired Pro­fes­sor of En­to­mol­o­gy Dr Christo­pher Starr.

Dr Starr who saw the grasshop­pers first-hand fol­low­ing a tour in Princes Town said he tast­ed the in­sects and they were not tasty.

“Some­one had sug­gest­ed that peo­ple should roast and eat them. I have eat­en cooked lo­custs in South­east Asia, and they are not bad. How­ev­er, a cou­ple of us tried them, and they’re not near­ly as tasty as re­al lo­custs. Be­sides, they’re a lot small­er, prob­a­bly not worth the both­er to re­move those pesky wings and legs,” he said.

The re­tired pro­fes­sor ex­plained that the Moru­ga grasshop­pers which are swarm­ing through res­i­den­tial and coastal parts of South Trinidad are on a “dead-end mis­sion.”

He pre­dicts that it will be hard­ly un­like­ly that the in­sects will be all over the place next year.

“They are mak­ing a fren­zied es­cape from the area where they orig­i­nat­ed, now that they are winged adults, but they are head­ed for ar­eas that are not good for re­pro­duc­tion,” Pro­fes­sor Starr ex­plained.

“These are all adults, about as many fe­males as males, and I have no doubt that a lot of mat­ing is go­ing on, prob­a­bly fol­lowed by lay­ing eggs in the soil, but if those eggs hatch it will be in in­hos­pitable habi­tat,” he added.

“When the grasshop­pers are at the peak of abun­dance in their im­ma­ture stages next year the peo­ple won’t be find­ing them all over the place in Princes Town or any­where down south out­side of the for­est. Those mass­es of adults that we see in open ar­eas now are on a dead-end mis­sion,” he ex­plained.

“If I were the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, I would think se­ri­ous­ly about seek­ing a pro­gramme of com­pen­sa­tion to farm­ers for their loss­es from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. Maybe there al­ready is such a pro­gramme in place, in which case a great swarm of hun­gry grasshop­pers de­scend­ing on your crops cer­tain­ly qual­i­fies,” Starr said.

He added, “There is noth­ing rad­i­cal about this, as plen­ty of coun­tries com­pen­sate in this way. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly im­pact­ful out­breaks of the Moru­ga grasshop­per are nei­ther fre­quent nor very wide­spread, so it wouldn’t break the trea­sury.”