Locusts leave behind trail of destruction in Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur

A swarm of locusts has left behind a trail of destruction in half a dozen blocks of Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur district.

Farmers and officials of the administration on Saturday scared away the locusts out of the fields by clanging thalis and producing sounds, however not before crops in more than half a dozen areas of the district including Machhehata, Misrikh, Khairabad, Biswan, Mahmudabad, Pisawan were destroyed.

Arvind Mohan Mishra (Deputy Agricultural Director) said that locusts from Hardoi district had entered Sitapur and damaged crops.

"Last (Friday) night, swarms of locusts attacked crops in four to five villages of the district. The administration with the help of responsible officers of the agriculture department and the fire brigade sprayed chemicals so that the locusts cannot sit on the crops," Mishra told ANI.

 

The official said that a team was constantly surveying the damage to the crops. "We are motivating farmers to scare away locusts by clanging thali-tali and producing sound from vehicles so that farmers can save their crops from locust attack in time," he added.

Farmers in various parts of the state have been using different tactics, including desperate measures -- beating steel utensils during late afternoons and evenings, playing loud music at night, creating wood-fire and running the tractor inside their fields -- to scare away the locusts.

Earlier on July 7, Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare had said that locust control operations were carried out in more than 2.75 lakh hectares area in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhatisgarh, Haryana and Bihar from April 11 till July 6, 2020.

Presently 60 control teams with spray vehicles are deployed in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and more than 200 Central Government personnel are engaged in locust control operations, it had said.