10,000 decares of farm lands under locust invasion in Turkey’s Mardin

MARDİN

Some 10,000 decares of cultivated lands in the southeastern province of Mardin’s Derik district have been under locust invasion for the last 10 days, Doğan News Agency reported on April 25.

Farmers have been in desperate straits to fight the locusts and asked for help from the district’s directorate of agriculture.

The owners of the fields, on which wheat, barley, and lentils are cultivated, have told authorities that a swarm of locusts, which came from a nearby mountainous area, damaged their crops significantly and were even entering their houses.

“An aerial application of pesticides should take place. Otherwise, there is no other way of getting rid of these locusts. We are waiting for help from our state and authorities. We want to be this problem to be solved,” said Nimet Karataş, a farmer in the Ilıca neighborhood.

İsmail Çelik, another farmer, said 75 percent of their crops were already destroyed due to a “drought,” and now the rest had been “eaten up by the locusts.”

“We are waiting for state officials to apply pesticide [on the area] from planes,” he said.

The Derik Directorate of Agriculture said three villages in the district were swarmed by locusts, as they are relatively hotter than other areas.

The provincial directorate of agriculture was notified about the incident. But they were reported to have run out of stock of pesticides, with officials placing an order to receive relevant ones as soon as possible.

The pesticides are set to arrive in Mardin in a couple of days.