The plague of as many as 360 billion insects has so far devastated East Africa before moving over Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India. Millions of baby locusts hatched in Kenya last week, sparking fears new swarms could soon wreak havoc across an already ravaged East Africa.
Chinese authorities have dispatched the 100,000 birds to its Xinjiang border in the far west of the country, where it meets Pakistan and India as the locusts continue to swarm eastwards.
A trial will take place in the coming months, after which the squadron will be sent to Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab provinces, as well as the Balochistan province where Chinese experts undertook a field visit to take samples and speak to local agriculturists.
Ducks can eat more than 200 locusts a day, compared with chickens which can manage just 70.
Pakistan declared a national emergency because the grasshoppers caused food shortages by destroying crops with Prime Minister Imran Khan calling the event “the worst locust attack in decades”.
vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.
The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.
READ MORE: End of the world: Locust plague sparks Bible apocalypse fears
A video shared by China’s state-run news site CGTN shows thousands of ducks waddling in legions down a road on their way to face the insects.
One Twitter user said the ducks “look like the allies troops here”.
The brown birds, dubbed “duck troops” by Chinese media, have been used to tackle locust infestations before and can be more effective than pesticides.
A resident named Wang, from Xinjiang, told Chinese newspaper Global Times that previous locust outbreaks happened in the end of summer and autumn in the region’s grassland areas.
However, Zhang Long, a professor from China Agriculture University told reporters in Pakistan the ducks would not be suited to the conditions there.
“Ducks rely on water, but in Pakistan’s desert areas, the temperature is very high,” Zhang said.
Zhang, part of a delegation of Chinese experts sent to help the south Asian country combat the locusts, advised the use of chemical or biological pesticides instead.
Lu Lizhi of the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences in China described the ducks as “biological weapons”.
He added: “Ducks like to stay in a group so they are easier to manage than chickens.”
In this latest outbreak – said to be the worst in 25 years – one swarm of locusts in Kenya is said to have reached a whopping 60km, which is further than the distance between Manchester and Liverpool, as the crow flies.
Desert locusts can travel up to 95 miles in a day and can eat their own body weight in plant material, meaning even a small swarm can consume as much food as 35,000 people in a day, according to the UN.
During each three-month breeding cycle, a single locust can breed 20 more, which is why the massive swarms are now threatening crops on either side of the Red Sea.
Locust swarms can fly up to 150km (90 miles) a day with the wind, and eat as much in one day as about 35,000 people.
The UN has warned that an imminent second hatch of the insects could threaten the food security of 25 million people across the region.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has a locust watch bulletin.
Its latest one says the “situation remains extremely alarming in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia where widespread Desert Locust infestations and a new generation of breeding threatens food security and livelihoods in the region”.