FAO's plan to combat desert locusts in Yemen discussed

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) held on Wednesday a meeting at its Office in Sana'a to discuss the developments related to combating the desert locusts.
The meeting touched on the FAO's plan to combat locust within the desert locust control project of the Organization and the possibility of providing support to conduct field surveys.
Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation Engineer Farid Mujawar said that swarms of desert locusts have reached a number of areas in the provinces of Saada , Jawf, Hadramout, Ibb and Baydha'a coming from Saudi Arabia.
The minister pointed out, in a statement to Saba, that this kind of locusts do not pose any risk to agriculture for the time being.
During the meeting, experts of the FAO's project for desert locust control made proposals to study the possibility of implementing the surveys as soon as possible, given that the topic of locusts constitutes an extreme importance and a serious problem threatening the food security in Yemen.
In the last agricultural season, the winter breeding areas in the Tihama plain were hit by a wave of desert locusts that devoured 90 percent of the main agricultural crops in Tihama region, which represents between 35 to 40 percent of Yemen's productivity from the different agricultural crops.