Tiddi dal (Locust) – Why not adapt the local solution

Through these lines we repeatedly suggest looking inwards for local problems and have presented several successful examples too.  This write-up is yet another example of how indigenous and out of the box thinking can address local challenges better.

Another swarm of locusts is expected to arrive Pakistan in early July from Africa.  Adding that to the local infestations that have already invaded a significantly large area, is expected to cause a massive destruction of crops and dependent livelihoods across the country.  It may cause a serious food security crisis and significant livelihood losses if remains unchecked. 

A national locust control cell is being set up at the federal government level to prepare and tackle the locust plague.  As usual, instead of proactively monitoring the situation periodically over several years, or at least since last year when some red flags got raised, we are now trying to do something that is already very late and may be would be too little. 

The efforts to control the locust invasion have so far been inadequate and disjointed at best.  Attention has been drawn to the absence of coordination between the federal government and the provincial governments to the detriment of the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and food security. The official response to the locust attack in the other provinces has not been satisfactory either.  Using even insecticide sprays does not resolve all the problem as that harm people and environment.

Source:  https://www.dawn.com/news/1560351

Insecticide sprays are effective but are very costly and also are not good otherwise.

• No bio safe pesticide is being used now
• Pesticides used carcinogenic to humans and poisonous to wildlife
• Chemical sprays are toxic for the environment and affect humans, wildlife and livestock

Now let’s look at a locally developed, simple but proven, at a smaller scale, method that can be expanded to address the challenge.

It’s an innovative pilot project in Pakistan that offers a way to sustainable cull the crop-destroying locust without using insecticides that are not good for both people and the environment.  It was the brainchild of Muhammad Khurshid, a civil servant in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, and Johar Ali, a biotechnologist from the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council.  Khurshid says they were inspired by an example in Yemen in May 2019. The motto in that war-torn country facing famine was, “Eat the locusts before they eat the crop.”

Idea is simple.  Instead of killing the locust, catch it, and use it for productive means.  Also catch the bugs in nights when they are sleeping.  All that is needed is for the local community to collect the locusts and sell them.  The whole pilot project and idea is as under:

Effort:

• Okara district was selected, a heavily populated rural area of Pakistan’s Punjab
• A three-day trial project in the Pepli Pahar Forest in Depalpur was initiated
• Reason for selecting the area was that a huge swarm of adult locusts were reported in mid-February 2020
• The forest area was chosen as it was less likely to be contaminated by insecticide
• Locusts only fly in daylight
• At night, they cluster on trees and open ground without dense vegetation and remain almost motionless till sunrise the next day
• Locusts are easy to catch at night, Khurshid says
• A slogan, “Catch locusts. Earn money. Save crops” was used
• Project offered to pay farmers 20 Pakistani rupees (USD 0.12) per kilogram of locusts
• Around 10-15 people showed up on the first day (night)
• Project provided them with bags
• Word of the money to be made spread quickly
• Hundreds of people showed up by the third day
• People even brought their own bags on their motorbikes and delivered bags at project office
• The project weighed the bags, verified that they were indeed full of locusts, and paid

Result:

• The community’s locust haul averaged seven tons a night
• The project team sold them to nearby chicken feed making plants
• Farmers netted up to 20,000 Pakistani rupees (USD 125) per person per night
• for one night’s work.

Benefits

• Control of locust spread
• High Protein fish, poultry and/or even dairy feed
• Less expansive but protein rich animal feed
• Saving of foreign exchange
• Income opportunity for local farmers
• Job opportunities for unemployed
• No new technology needed
• No huge startup capital or infrastructure needed

Locust based chicken feed was prepared, processed and tested by Hi-Tech Group, one of Pakistan’s biggest poultry breeders and animal feed makers.  Muhammad Athar, the general manager Hi-Tech Feeds (within the), says his firm fed the bug-based feed to its broiler chickens in a five-week study. “All nutritional aspects came out positive – there was no issue with the feed made from these locusts. If we can capture the locusts without spraying on them, their biological value is high and they have good potential for use in fish, poultry and even dairy feed,” he says.

“We currently import 300,000 tonnes of soya bean and after extracting the oil for sale, we use the soya bean crush to use in animal feed. Soya bean has 45% protein whereas locusts have 70% protein. Soya bean meal is 90 Pakistani rupees per kilogram (USD 0.5), whereas locusts are free – the only cost is capturing them and drying them so they can be sold as useable product,” says Athar.  The processing cost of drying and milling locusts is only 30 Pakistani rupees per kg (USD 0.19). As Pakistan imports soya beans, there may be substantial potential savings in foreign exchange costs too.

“There are so many jobless people because of the pandemic. They can all be put to work collecting the locusts and selling them,” he says. Furthermore, rice-milling firms now have spare summer capacity, as rice is usually milled in winter.

Ahmed advocates a strategy of mass netting. “Nets, which can be as high as 50 feet stretched across poles in the ground, are a one-time cost and they can keep catching the locusts as they come in multiple swarms,” he says.

Source:  https://www.thethirdpole.net/2020/05/28/huge-swarms-of-locusts-could-be-fed-to-chickens/

(Contents of above have been taken from The Third Pole, details can be found at the above link)

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Babar Saeed

bsaeed@yahoo.com

June 01, 2020