Agriculture

Question 1

Locust outbreak

Answer 1

Locust outbreak
Why in News > Locust outbreak reported in Rajasthan
and Gujarat from areas bordering Pakistan.
About
• Locusts are related to grasshoppers.
• The common name which it generally
refers is ‘short-horned grasshoppers’.
• The desert locust is potentially the most dangerous because of the ability of swarms to fly rapidly across great distances.
• When environmental conditions produce many green plants, locusts can congregate into thick, mobile, ravenous swarms.

    Locust outbreak • Locust swarms can devastate crops and cause major agricultural damage. • Desert locust plagues threatens the economic livelihood of one-tenth of the world's humans. • A desert locust swarm can pack between 40 and 80 million locusts into less than half a square mile. • Each locust can consume the equivalent of their body weight (2 g) in plants each day, so a swarm of such size would eat 423 million pounds of plants every day. • An outbreak of desert locusts in the villages of Rajasthan and Gujarat has posed a threat to the crops. • India has a “Locust Control and Research scheme” that is being implemented through the ‘Locust Warning Organisation’(LWO).

   Locust outbreak Locust Warning Organisation • It was established in 1939 and amalgamated in 1946 with the Directorate of Plant Protection Quarantine and Storage (PPQS) of the Ministry of Agriculture. • The LWO’s responsibility is monitoring and control of the locust situation in Scheduled Desert Areas mainly in Rajasthan and Gujarat and partly in Punjab and Haryana. • It publishes a fortnightly bulletin on the locust situation. • It has set up a helpline for farmers in the State.