RESILIENCERECOVERINGFARMLANDDEVOURED BY LOCUSTS IN PAKISTANIn Pakistan, agriculture—a majorpart of the country’s economy—
has experienced grave destruction
due to swarms of desert locusts.
Japan has taken action to assist the
beleaguered farmers.

Countless locusts form swarms
and take to the air, totally blocking
out the sky. Not satisfied with justeating the vegetation in forestsand savannahs, they migratefrom farm to farm, devouring
produce wherever they go. The
formation of the locust swarms
every few decades is related to an

Swarms of locusts caused severe damage to
agricultural land in Pakistan. XINHUA/AFLO

PAKISTAN

imbalance in the delicate naturalenvironment caused by extreme
weather events—droughts, heavy
rains, and the like.
Swarms of desert locusts thatformed in eastern Africa and the tipof the Arabian Peninsula from 2018
to 2019 arrived in Pakistan in both2019 and 2020. They damaged aJAPANtotal of 17.8 million hectares offarmland in the country, making
it the largest and most destructive
locust disaster ever.
The
Japan
International
Cooperation Agency ( JICA),
which has long been implementing
agricultural cooperation activities
in Pakistan, started to provide

Left: JICA distributed wheat seeds and fertilizer to 3,000 Pakistani small farmers, who also received instruction on fertilizer use. JICA
Right: The signing ceremony for a partnership between JICA and the FAO. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, meetings before the ceremony were held
online. Hagiwara is shown standing second from right in the back row. JICA

emergency support in 2020—
primarily aid to small farmers
who had suffered heavy damage
from the locusts. HAGIWARA
Ritsuko of JICA’s Pakistan
Office says, “At first, agriculture
extension officers wanted us tosend pesticides to control the
locusts. However, consideringthevariouscircumstancesbrought about by the COVID-19
pandemic such as the inability toprovide proper guidance on how
to use pesticides, we decided to
distribute wheat seeds in time forthe fall 2020 planting season to
help restore farmers’ livelihoodsin the affected areas.” Therefore,
instead of pesticides, JICA sent
seeds and fertilizer to 3,000 small
farmers. Harvesting the crops
from these seeds should provide
enough income to offset thelocust damage.
To implement the support,
JICA leveraged the network thatit had built up in the country
over the years. It has enlisted help
from Pakistan’s local government
officials and technical experts
to decide which farmers should
receive the aid and how to

fairly select, store, inspect, anddistribute the supplies. The
transport of seeds between
provinces—otherwise limited on
account of the COVID-19
pandemic and Pakistan’s foodpolicies—was thus smooth.
JICA has also partneredwith the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United
Nations (FAO), which possesses
specialized
knowledge
oncontrolling locusts. As part ofa one-year plan that began in
March 2021, they have enhanced
the monitoring and control
capabilities
ofgovernment
officials in Pakistan to help themquickly identify new locust groups
and share information about themnationwide, which will lead tomore effective countermeasures,such as the timely distributionof pesticides. An information
network has been set up acrossPakistan to measure locust densityand predict swarms by collecting

photos with GPS metadata taken
and sent in by local observers.
AZEGAMI Tomohiro from the
JICA Economic Development
Department says, “We need tokeep up a steady pace of training toprepare for future locust swarms. I
hope to use this experience going
forward so that we can support
even more countries when thenext locust swarm strikes.”
Although the next outbreak oflocusts may be decades away, Japan
will continue to offer support toPakistan and elsewhere to help
people avoid similar difficulties
whenever they may occur.

Top: Local government officials conductedlocust-control operations with the supplies
provided by the FAO. A training program gave
instruction on how to find locust eggs andlarvae, and so forth. FAO
Left: Trial application of the latest technologies,
such as using drones to monitor locusts andspray pesticides, is also in progress. FAO