A lobster sleeve of between 10 and 15 square kilometers of extension has been located for a week in southern Currents -the first case of this magnitude in the province in 73 years- and worries Brazil, Uruguay and neighboring districts.
From Senasa they trust in the control of the pest, which can cause significant socioeconomic damage but does not affect human or animal health.
“The advance of the plague towards areas where it was not in recent years, such as Corrientes, has taken on a lot of relevance,” said Héctor Medina, coordinator of the organism’s National Lobster and Turtle Program, in the talk “Locusts: A plague with a long history“.
In this sense, Medina recalled that “the first record that exists of the plague is from 1538, when it caused damage to cassava crops in the province of Buenos Aires; in 1812, during the battle of Tucumán, it contributed to the fact that the army led by Belgrano defeated the Spanish, and until 1954 it wreaked havoc on a recurring basis. “
After that year, it entered a state of recession with small regional explosions until 2015, when it reemerged strongly in Argentina, spread in 2016, advanced to Bolivia in January 2017, went to Paraguay in February of that same year, returned to Argentina and repeated this circuit in 2018 and 2019, cyclically.
“This year we have a new invasion, but the novelty is that it advanced to the east of the country, something that had not happened for a long time. After 73 years, it reached Corrientes, after moving more than a thousand kilometers in a month and crossing the Paraná” , detailed the specialist.
Upon entering Corrientes, the alarm went off in neighboring countries, Brazil and Uruguay, said Medina, who considered “difficult to know where the plague is going, if it is going to enter Brazil, Uruguay or Entre Ríos”, although he stressed that “yes if it happened it would not be new, in 1930 and 1940 it was very common for that to happen. “
In this sense, the specialist – within the framework of a talk that is part of the cycle of virtual seminars organized by Senasa with the accompaniment of IICA in Argentina-, said that “this plague -the one with the greatest impact on the agricultural sector- in the past it reached the Argentine Patagonia, and from there it went to Chile. “
After explaining the small differences between lobster and tucura -both insects in the family locust– Medina highlighted that it is a highly polyphagous species, which feeds on any plant material, can damage pastures and grasslands, but also other crops, and in a few minutes it can do very important damage.
In that sense, he specified that an adult lobster can eat its weight in one day and in a 1 square kilometer sleeve there are about 40 million insects, which consume the daily food of 2,000 cows.
To its great voracity is added its migratory capacity, which allows it to travel up to 150 kilometers in a day, depending on temperature and winds, which made it arrive in a month from the Chaco-Formosa border to Reconquista (Santa Fe) and in two days it will travel 250 kilometers.
The locust plague in Argentina occurs when the conditions for it to develop, benign climate and good rainfall occur in winters
Medina, after highlighting that it is “a plague of high economic, social and political impact, rural but that usually passes through towns and cities,” said that the locust “only feeds on vegetables, does not affect human or animal health, or it is a direct risk for the human being “.
To prevent it from becoming a pest and not causing socio-economic damage and above all, not impacting the productive sector, Medina emphasized preventive management, monitoring and surveillance, and early control.
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