Repellents for Native Locusts
It was distressing to read the Weekly Times article about the impact of a
small swarm of Native Locust on a freshly planted tomato crop.
It highlights to me the vulnerability of such
crops, grown under such conditions, to perfectly natural elements of our
environment, such as native insects. The lack of sustainable insect control
methods is a major problem, brought about by decades of poor insect management
practices. Despite multiple applications of chemical on the crop itself, and
broad-scale insecticide use on locusts across the landscape, the young tomato
crop was still damaged.
Had these tomato plants been protected with insect
repellents, the Locusts would have ignored them and moved on. Cost effective
insect repellents, based on plant extracts, such as Neem Oil, have proven
effective in other parts of the world, in repelling Africa�s Desert Locust.
Horehound is also believed to be a deterrent for grasshoppers in the USA. If
such plant-based repellents are unavailable, surely there are other repellents
that could be used?
As Native Locust swarms move quite rapidly across
the landscape, short term repellents would be a very effective means of
protecting high value, sensitive crops, without the negative environmental and
health implications of broad-scale chemical- insecticides. Why have repellent
options been ignored?
Eris O'Brien,
Mitiamo
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