Chickens to fight locusts in China pastureland

Northwest China's Gansu province plans to send an army of chickens to fight locusts in its pastureland this summer, the local government said Friday.

About 100,000 chickens will be sent to the pastureland in nine cities and counties -- including the Tibetan counties of Xiahe and Tianzhu -- this month to combat a locust plague, the provincial agricultural and stockbreeding department said in a statement.

It said insect pests infest at least 1.33 million hectares of pastureland in Gansu every year, as a result of climate change and environment degradation.

"Locust plagues in particular threaten the farming and herding industries and deteriorates the pasture's ecology," said Liu Zhimin, deputy chief of the agriculture and stockbreeding.

He said the province first tried to raise chickens on locust plagued pastureland in Sunan county in 2010. "Ten herding families joined the pilot program and raised 1,000 chickens each."

The 10,000 chickens proved successful in combating locusts on some 6,667 hectares of pastureland and each family earned an average of 30,000 yuan (4,713 U.S. dollars) that year by chicken farming, said Liu.

Last year, 85,000 chickens were kept on the pastureland of 10 counties in southern Gansu. The direct economic benefits totaled 6 million yuan.

Gansu has about 18 million hectares of pastureland, which covers 40 percent of its territory.