Thursday, 28 March 2024

Agriculture In Iran 

Iran’s agricultural department ( Ministry of Agriculture -  Jihad ) is formulating a large-scale strategy to combat the swarms of desert locusts’ attack

 

iranianagriculturalnewsagency.com Iran’s agricultural department ( Ministry of Agriculture -  Jihad ) is formulating a large-scale strategy to combat the swarms of desert locusts’ attack.

This swarm of desert locusts is traveling to Iran from the Arabian countries for the third year in a row. These massive swarms of desert locusts’ attacks are considered to be highly damaging to the farmlands’ food productions and could potentially destroy a large amount of food if remain unchallenged.

Within the southern part of Iran, where the swarms of desert locusts have already hit, there are currently 7 provinces combating the pests attack, and It is believed that this number could increase to 13 out of Iran’s 32 provinces. It is estimated that the affected areas are going to be over 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of farmland and the operation formulated to tackle this problem is expected to last until September. The affected farmlands are located in Hormozgan, Sistan-Baluchistan, Khuzestan, Fars, Bushehr, and Kerman.

Saeed Moein, the director of Iran’s Plant Protection Organization (PPO) has asserted, they have already allocated a budget of 150 billion rials ($3.6m) to the local farm-owners and Plant Protection supervisor to fight the affected areas and added there has been a further request 1 trillion rials ($24m) from the government which is expected to be approved in April.

 

What is Desert locust and how do they behave?

 

Desert locust is a mutation of the Grasshoppers Insect family. They are mainly found in Africa, Arabia, and West Asia. Desert locust tends to alter their habitation according to their environmental changes and therefore are known as two distinctive types: tranquil or excitable.

Tranquil types, as the name suggests, are forms in a solitary, shorter-winged, highly fecund, and non-migratory group and exist unnoticed, excitable, on the other hand, form into a gregarious, long-winged, and migratory group which they may travel long distances into new areas for the search of food and therefore attack farmlands – the area of food production prepared by humans for humans use.

 

iranianagriculturalnewsagency.com Iran’s agricultural department ( Ministry of Agriculture -  Jihad ) is formulating a large-scale strategy to combat the swarms of desert locusts’ attack.

 

So far, the best strategy to mitigate the destructive impact of this pests attack is Crop spraying. Crop spraying is the process of spraying poison as insecticides, pesticides, fungicides onto Crop.

These particular poisons have been designed to only affect the insect and cause no harm to the plant themes. Often these poisons wash off with a simple water shower and dissolved into the soil with no harmful effect.

To prevent damages to the actual farmland, this operation implemented by designing a clone farmland using weeds. The clone farmland is heavily sprayed by the poison which render the area highly lethal to the Desert locust. Once the Desert locust has travelled to the area for the search of food, they attacked these baited clone farmlands and eventually meet their demise.

 

iranianagriculturalnewsagency.com Iran’s agricultural department ( Ministry of Agriculture -  Jihad ) is formulating a large-scale strategy to combat the swarms of desert locusts’ attack.

 

 

International and regional efforts to mitigate the impact of this destructive phenomenon. 

 

As was explained in the article, excitable Locusts are migratory in nature, which means they can travel relatively long distances in search of food. This means, these insects, migrate from one country to another. In this case, swarms of desert locusts have begun their journey in the Arabian country, have hit Iran, and eventually end their migration in India and Pakistan if remain unchallenged. 

Since this is a phenomenon that affects multiple countries, there is a joined effort to prevent this problem. For instance, in this case, India has already provided Iran with 20,000 litres of pesticide (an effective Crop spraying poison) to stop this problem in track. On the international scale, these kinds of behaviour are called reciprocity, and it is highly common between nations.

iranianagriculturalnewsagency.com Iran’s agricultural department ( Ministry of Agriculture -  Jihad ) is formulating a large-scale strategy to combat the swarms of desert locusts’ attack.

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