This week, the Ministry of Agriculture in Russia held a meeting where the issue of locust harm was discussed and instructed the regions to take preventive pest control measures in 2017.
During the meeting, it was noted that in recent years there has been a significant increase in the number of locusts, which among cases has caused problems for crops. The Department of Agriculture is concerned that a swarm of insects can destroy a crop in a matter of minutes. When their food source begins to diminish and they are in close contact with each other, serotonin is released, forcing them to switch to grasshoppers for food, and then a swarm of voracious locusts forms.
The last couple of years in the North Caucasus have been hot and dry, which has led to the depletion of grasshoppers food, and then to the emergence of locusts, which moved further north and west, to important agricultural regions of southern Russia. The Ministry of Agriculture's Technical Center provided regional offices with an action plan and pest control measures that include jet fuel and organic phosphorus reserves. For 2017, the ministry plans to allocate funds that, in the event of a locust, will provide control over 800,000 hectares of land. 
