BADIN: Huge swarms of new breed of locusts has landed in Badin, Seeriani, Talhar and Tando Bago, eating away crops and green leaves and bark of trees.

Affected farmers told this reporter that the insects started invading their fields on Saturday and continued to mow down standing crops of wheat and tomatoes on hundreds of acres. The fresh attack had literally broken their back as it inflicted on them losses on a massive scale, they said.

Leaders of local farmer organisations and Save Badin Action Committee, Khalil Ahmed Bhurgari, Mir Noor Ahmed Talpur and Azizullah Dero, lashed out at both federal and Sindh governments for not taking the threat from locusts seriously and demanded immediate aerial spray in the insect-infested areas to exterminate them before they wriggled out of their cocoons and destroyed all farmland.

They said that the insect had been in the desert of areas Khairpur, Sanghar and Tharparkar for the past seven months where it continued to breed and multiply. They would fly out of the breeding grounds unhindered after attaining maturity and land on farmland of their choice to eat away standing crops, they said.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2020