Al Jazeera reports that Iran is now implementing large-scale operations in its southern provinces to combat new swarms of the desert locust, swept in by winds coming from the Arabian Peninsula. The area involved is in the range of 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres). It is unknown if Iran has any pesticide-spraying airplanes or drones, and highly unlikely that they would — Turkey managed to ship just one Piper PA-36 Pawnee Brave spraying aircraft to only Pakistan since 2020.
This is the third year in a row that Iran has been decimated by the insects; during the previous two years, some of its military was deployed to help combat the scourge.
It comes at a particularly crucial time for Iran; since the imposition of U.S. sanctions, Iran’s economy has become increasingly dependent on a robust agricultural sector for sustained growth. It has also been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, India took the lead in promoting cooperation amongst itself, Pakistan and Iran in combatting the desert locusts; “New Delhi has so far delivered two shipments of pesticides to Iran. The first shipment of 20,000 liters of pesticide was delivered in June 2020 while Iran received the second, in the same amount, earlier this month just before Nowruz—the Iranian new year that marks the beginning of spring.”
Locust swarms continue to decline in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, due to local operations and poor rainfall, but that situation can rapidly shift if the spring rains are abundant, causing eggs already embedded in the soil to hatch.
