EDITORIAL: In a timely report, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has warned that losses arising from locust attacks in the country 'could be severe' if control measures fail to be effective. In its latest 'The State of the Economy' report, SBP has said that while the country has been able to effectively meet this threat in the past, this year the problem could cause some serious damage to the agriculture sector and therefore the economy if everything that is being done to control it turns out to be not enough, which means that the government has its work cut out for it. In 2019, as the report points out, the Ministry of National Food Security and Research's (MNFSR's) Department of Plant Protection (DPP), the lead institution in charge of managing the threat from desert locusts in the country, surveyed an area of 932,580 hectares, treated 300,595 hectares in three provinces and sprayed 150,839 litres of pesticides during control operations. Yet despite all these efforts the threat seems to have come back, with even more force, this year. Vast numbers of locusts were allowed to breed in different parts of the country and new swarms originating from Africa have continued to move east. And reports now indicate that as many as 61 districts have already been impacted by desert swarms as of May 2020, with Balochistan being the hardest hit.
A detailed assessment of the quantum damage to crops is still awaited, but initial estimates in the Pakistan Economic Survey 2019-20 seem to suggest that over 115,000 hectares of crops, including that of wheat, oil seed, cotton, gram, fruits and vegetables, have already been affected. To be fair, it's not as if this threat has suddenly descended from the skies and caught the government completely unawares. Not only were experts crying hoarse about it ever since last year, the Sindh government also wrote to the federal government as far back as March, requesting a handful of aircraft for spraying pesticides in areas where the pests were multiplying. Back then, even though the government had declared a state of emergency, not only did it not respond to the request about the aircraft, it also did not take timely measures to cleanse all the places where the locusts were breeding. And now, after calling upon the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), provincial agriculture departments and the armed forces to join in the fight against the locust, we hear the government is in the process of rolling out the National Action Plan for Surveillance and Control of Desert Locust in Pakistan, which consists of three, clearly marked phases. The first phase covered the period from January to June 2020. Phase two will last from July to December, and the last phase from January to June 2021. The programme is supposed to cover everything from acquisition of necessary technical expertise to Micron air sprayers to targeted action and compensation for the affected farmers.
It is not just the earnings of some farmers that are at risk or the hit that the agriculture sector might have to take as a whole, but the provision of the country's staple food crop and hundreds of billions of rupees worth of investments that these pests would just eat away in a matter of days. Already the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned of two possible scenarios if things continue to go wrong. In the first case, loss to the agriculture sector from a locust invasion is estimated at around Rs205 billion in case of 15 percent damage to wheat, gram and potato crops only. In the second case, which foresees a 25 percent damage to the agriculture crop, potential losses for Rabi crops may be to the tune of Rs353 billion and around Rs464 billion for Kharif crops. This is a grave national emergency. Already high wheat prices have people, especially the lesser well off, worried to no end. As the economy takes off once again and a lot of people will rush to reclaim jobs that were lost due to the pandemic and the lockdown, the prospect of unaffordable food on top of all the other constraints on the budget is simply unacceptable. The government must, therefore, do everything that is necessary to prevent yet another locust invasion and protect the wheat crop and its price in the market.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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