Cloud of locusts heading to Brazil

Outbreak that is close to Corrientes, in Argentina, has an extension of approximately 80 square kilometers and can move up to 150km/day

A cloud of locusts rapidly advancing over Argentina could approach the border with Brazil in the coming days. The plague arrived in the country through the province of Formosa, on the border with Paraguay, moved over Chaco, Santa Fé and is now approaching Corrientes, the last province before reaching the border with Brazil, in the western region of Rio Grande do Sul.

According to the researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), Daniela Vitti, the detected cloud is approximately 80 square kilometers long and can move between 100 and 150 kilometers per day.

The researcher explains that this species is a South American grasshopper (Schistocerca cancellata), which gathers in clouds and feeds on practically all types of vegetation. In this adult stage in which they are, they fly over large territories, do not cause much damage and, if they do, they are punctual. They reproduce and spawn in the soil, where a new generation of locusts hatches from there.

However, according to the coordinator of the national locust program of the National Agro-Food Health and Quality Service (SENASA), Héctor Medina, a cloud of one square kilometer has approximately 40 million insects and "can eat the same as 35.000 people or around 2.000 cows per day, mainly affecting pastures", he told MetSul.

The length of the detected cloud can reach 10 kilometers. “This invasion that we are experiencing at the moment is not new, as in previous years we had a similar situation; It was predictable that, in 2020, this scenario would repeat itself, we are trying to monitor the situation”, explained Medina.

Entomologist Milton Souza Guerra, who passed away in 2015, already warned about the risk of locusts at the beginning of 2000. He said that the next wave would come from the west, as the Chaco region had many conditions for their proliferation and that there was an important population of this type. insect just waiting for some circumstances that would trigger the pest level.