A desert locust feeds on wheat crops near the village of Nur Gamma in Balochistan province, Pakistan, on March 6.
Photographer: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg
‘Our Children Will Starve’ Say Pakistan Farmers as Locusts Breed
Government seeks help from China to defeat pests that have destroyed thousands of acres.
Three swarms of locusts this year have all but wiped out Saadullah Zehri’s wheat crop on his small farm in the mountains of Pakistan's vast and arid Balochistan province. He’s worried about what’s coming next.
“Every farmer in the village has lost crops worth hundreds of thousands of rupees,” said Zehri, 33, a bearded father of six. But in the hills surrounding the village of Nur Gamma, two hours’ drive north of the city of Khuzdar, are hundreds of thousands of pods of orange-colored eggs waiting to hatch into a new plague in time to devour his most valuable crop.