Locusts Meet Little Resistance

01-Jun-07

The lack of pest control equipment in Tajikistan means that this year’s plague of locusts will cause even more damage than usual, say NBCentralAsia observers.

Every year Tajikistan is invaded by locusts which devour grain and cotton plants, but this year the insects have infested nearly double the normal area.

Yusuf Murodov, head of the state enterprise in charge of plant protection and agricultural chemicals, told NBCentralAsia that about 74,500 hectares of farm land had been invaded as of June 1, while only 45,500 hectares was affected by the same time last year.

Although 55,000 hectares of land has been treated with pesticides, it is areas along the borders with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan – from where the locusts migrate – that are under the greatest risk of devastation because nobody will take responsibility for the problem.

According to Habibullo Tohirov, head of plant protection at Murdodov’s firm, the worst hit area is the southern Khatlon region, where for example, two-thirds of the pasture land in Shaartuz district has been destroyed.

There is still no overall information about the amount of damage sustained in Tajikistan, but Tohirov said the locusts were continuing to migrate onto more grain, cotton, maize, fruit and vegetable fields.

Tohirov said there is not enough equipment or pesticide to deal with an infestation on this scale. For example, there are only 22 tractor-drawn sprayers and 90 hand-held ones for the whole of Khatlon region.

An NBCentral Asia interviewee in Khatlon region who wanted to remain anonymous said that the area of land infested with locusts is already much greater than the official reports say. The insects are so rife that for the first time, the emergency situations and civil defence committee has deployed two planes to drop pesticides on the fields.

“If we don’t manage to stamp out the main areas of infestation by the middle of June, they will increase many times over next year,” he said.

According to economist Hojimuhammad Umarov, the failure to deal with the locust problem, which results in the destruction year after year of grain and cotton, the most profitable crops, is harming farmers’ livelihoods and undermining efforts to alleviate poverty.

He believes the government should come up with a new strategy to take locust eradication to a whole new level, including better early warning systems and teaching people how to deal with the insects.

(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)