'Many will starve': locusts devour crops and livelihoods in Pakistan
Written by Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer Baloch
Farmers faced with worst plague in recent history say they have been left to fend for themselves
Mir Gul Muhammad, a farmer in Balochistan province, was blunt. “The worst that we have ever seen, ever, in our whole life,” he said of the swarms of locusts that descended on his village of Gharok.
“I cultivated around 50 acres of cotton crops and all of them have been eaten and destroyed by locusts,” he said. “Besides cotton, my other crops – onion, chilli and tomato – have been affected badly too. It is a loss of around 10m rupees [£51,000]. As a farmer, it will take years to recover from this loss.”
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