China sends locust extermination team to Pakistan

[Kailash Kumar]

China sends locust extermination team to Pakistan

2020/2/20

Photo taken with mobile phone on Feb. 15, 2020 shows Pakistani children trying to avoid locusts swarming in Okara district in eastern Pakistan's Punjab province.

China is sending a team of locust extermination experts to Pakistan this week to help the country end the ongoing locust outbreak there. China possesses world-leading technologies in locust control, and can provide pesticide and machines that are much needed in Pakistan, officials said.

The Chinese team will set up a targeted solution and deal with this challenge with Pakistan together, said Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing on Tuesday in a meeting with Pakistani Minister for National Food Security and Research Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, according to a statement of the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan.

Bakhtiar said China has world-leading technologies in locust control, and he hopes to use Chinese knowledge to deal with the locust outbreak. China's support for Pakistan amid the novel coronavirus outbreak in China showed the deep relationship between the two countries, he said.

Pakistan has declared a national emergency over its worst locust plague in two decades, which has battered 40 percent of the country's crops, Pakistani news website nation.com.pk reported on Wednesday.

Chinese machines are also expected to be used to aid Pakistan, nation.com.pk reported.

Qu Dongyu, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, said the situation could become worse in April if not contained in time, Chinese news website ce.cn reported on Wednesday.

China has sufficient reserves of pesticide and related machines for locust control, which are the tools Pakistan lacks and is in urgent need of, media reports said.

Fungal biocides and antagonist colonization developed by China could be deployed in countries hit by the locust outbreak, said Kang Le, an entomologist with the Beijing Institutes of Life Science, the China Science Daily reported on Saturday.

According to a notice released by China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in 2017, in the event that a locust outbreak happens in China, large insecticide spreading machines including aircraft will be used to contain the plague.

Originating in Africa, the plague of desert locusts crossed over the Red Sea into Europe and Asia earlier this year. This species of grasshopper usually lives a solitary life, but will form massive swarms if conditions including climate are met that promote breeding, reports said.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1180269.shtml

 

[Indos]

Pakistani should collect all of the cats they can found and put them all in locus effected region since cat like Locust so much. @jamahir as cat lover you should know this as well.

 

[Pakistansdefender]

Pakistani should collect all of the cats they can found and put them all in locus effected region since cat like Locust so much. @jamahir as cat lover you should know this as well.

Only then cats would become pest then.
You can't play god. These food chains are made by him..if we introduce another specie thinking it might end the pest, it almost everything ends up being a pest too.

This is a one time problem.
I once saw in lahore in my childhood 10 years ago Probably.. And now.
Simple Spraying would help. And further killing and preventive medicine by studying their life cycle we can destroy them.

 

[Beast]

Pakistani should collect all of the cats they can found and put them all in locus effected region since cat like Locust so much. @jamahir as cat lover you should know this as well.

Are you trying to be sarcastic by acting stupid in such critical situation?

 

[JSCh]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1232840443483680769

Global Times✔@globaltimesnews

100,000 #ducks from Shaoxing, #Zhejiang Province, would be sent to #Pakistan to tackle the #locust disaster in the country. Ducks of the same species from Zhejiang quashed a locust crisis in #Xinjiang 20 years ago, local media reported.



130
9:30 AM - Feb 27, 2020

 

[OIO]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1232840443483680769

Global Times✔@globaltimesnews

100,000 #ducks from Shaoxing, #Zhejiang Province, would be sent to #Pakistan to tackle the #locust disaster in the country. Ducks of the same species from Zhejiang quashed a locust crisis in #Xinjiang 20 years ago, local media reported.



130
9:30 AM - Feb 27, 2020

 

[Adonis]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1232840443483680769

Global Times✔@globaltimesnews

100,000 #ducks from Shaoxing, #Zhejiang Province, would be sent to #Pakistan to tackle the #locust disaster in the country. Ducks of the same species from Zhejiang quashed a locust crisis in #Xinjiang 20 years ago, local media reported.



130
9:30 AM - Feb 27, 2020

Lol...so this is the Locust Extermination Expert Team?

 

[Pan-Islamic-Pakistan]

We should be catching locusts and eating them. Large nets should be spread out. They are an excellent source of protein and encouraged consumption per our faith.

Arabs will pay a hefty amount to get their hands on such locusts. We can also export them to Gulf. They are considered a delicacy.

 

[Zhukov]

We should be catching locusts and eating them. Large nets should be spread out. They are an excellent source of protein and encouraged consumption per our faith.

Arabs will pay a hefty amount to get their hands on such locusts. We can also export them to Gulf. They are considered a delicacy.

Yaar We are not eating Bloody grasshopers. We are happy with Chicken,Beef and Mutton

 

[Pan-Islamic-Pakistan]

Yaar We are not eating Bloody grasshopers. We are happy with Chicken,Beef and Mutton

Ya3ni 7abibi, bon appetit.

 

[Zhukov]

Ya3ni 7abibi, bon appetit.

So next habibi hunting season in Pakistan will be of Grass hoppers instead of birds and markhors. Good for Arabs Good for us. BTW that used to be our Children Nightmare, A Grass hopper jumps and sit on you remember?

 

[bafxet]

Aren't we capable of doing anything by ourselves? Pakistan was never like this

 

[Yaseen1]

i think we should populate natural predators of locusts in these regions,there may be decline in birds population in such areas which is increasing locusts

 

[Salman876]

Aren't we capable of doing anything by ourselves? Pakistan was never like this

No, we 220 million people can't do any productive work...

 

[Counter-Errorist]

Some history for those suggesting introducing natural locust predators to control their population:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced in 1958 by Mao Zedong, as a hygiene campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease: the mosquitos responsible for malaria; the rodents that spread the plague; the pervasive airborne flies; and the sparrows – specifically the Eurasian tree sparrow – which ate grain seed and fruit.[1] The government also declared that "birds are public animals of capitalism".[2] According to some eyewitnesses, citizens would bang pots and pans so that sparrows would not have the chance to rest on tree branches and would fall dead from the sky.[3] Sparrow nests were also destroyed, eggs were broken, and chicks were killed. In addition to these tactics, citizens also resorted to simply shooting the birds down from the sky.[4] These mass attacks depleted the sparrow population, pushing it to near extinction.[4] Furthermore, contests were held among enterprises, government agencies, and schools in cleanliness.[3] Non-material rewards were given to those who handed in the largest number of rat tails, dead flies and mosquitoes, or dead sparrows.[5]

[...]

By April 1960, Chinese leaders changed their opinion due to the influence of ornithologist Tso-hsin Cheng[2] who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains.[8][9] Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased.[10][9] Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows upset the ecological balance, and insects destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[10] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 15–45 million people died of starvation.[11][12]