As such, China has devised the perfect plan to deal with a swarm of crop-eating pests: hungry ducks.
Duck power
According to a report by Bloomberg, Chinese duck squads will be deployed to Pakistan to fight a swarm of crop-eating locusts that threaten regional food security.
The report said at least 100,000 ducks are expected to be sent to Pakistan to overcome the problem.
Quoting a senior researcher with the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences Lu Lizhi, the report said ducks are “biological weapons” and can be more effective in dealing with the problem than pesticide.
“One duck is able to eat more than 200 locusts a day.”
However, before deploying the ducks, a trial will be conducted in China to measure the method’s effectiveness.
But based on the previous time ducks were sent in to exterminate the pests, the experiment could very well bear fruit: almost twenty years ago, thousands of ducks were sent to Xinjiang in western China to eat locusts.
Swarms of desert locusts have been destroying crops from eastern Africa to South Asia at a rapid pace, prompting an emergency response.
Last month, Pakistan declared a state of emergency because of the locust plague.
Let's just hope the locusts don't invade Malaysia.