Swarms of locusts attack standing crops in Sahiwal

SAHIWAL: After leaving their trail of destruction in Sindh and Cholistan in Punjab, swarms of locusts have now attacked hundreds of acres wheat and mustard crops in Sahiwal, ARY News reported on Sunday.

The swarms of crop eating grasshoppers have now landed in Sahiwal and surrounding areas. The locusts have attacked standing crops of wheat, mustard and potatoes on hundreds of acres farmlands in Kumair, Harappa, Bangla, Cheechawatani and other areas of the region.

Provincial agriculture department has advised farmers to adopt precautionary measures to protect their crops from the locusts attack.

The crop eating insects bring hunger with them by thoroughly eating crops and all vegetation they find at any place.

In June this year, swarms of locusts attacked cotton fields in Khairpur, Sukkur, and Ghotki districts in Sindh. Farmers had to bear hundreds of thousands of rupees losses due to crop loss in the attack.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in first week of September had warned that the situation relating to locusts in Pakistan was “most serious” as a second generation of the insect had been bred.

According to the FAO’s Locust Watch report, there remains a risk of further breeding, causing locust numbers to increase, with the possibility of swarm formation from late September onward.