干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria (Forskal), is an extremely mobile pest. It is not uncommon for swarms to travel hundreds of kilometres. Damage caused by desert locusts can be devastating, although owing to the insect's mobility - it is never uniformly distributed. This makes it extremely difficult to precisely ascertain crop losses. Attempts to study the economic impact of desert locusts also run up against certain limits. Microeconomic calculations cannot be performed, and even macroeconomic studies conducted at the level of the national economy do not permit many conclusions to be drawn. Truly useful results are only yielded by regional studies that take account of the locusts' movements across national borders. This paper highlights the current situation, in which the lack of reliable figures makes cost-benefit calculations a difficult task. In this paper, an attempt is made to take available figures on swarms and hopper bands, the: costs of control measures and potential damage as the basis for a novel approach to gauging economic aspects of desert locust control. Possible backup measures for collecting data are also sketched.