In 1929-30 this pest caused havoc by its invasions of Transjordan and Palestine, Syria and Turkey, Iraq, Sinai, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, Somaliland, India and Persia, the Empire Marketing Board recalls in reporting to-day a grant of £2,720, which it has made towards the cost of carrying out a comprehensive schome of locust research under the direction of the Imperial Institute of Entomology. The grant is the result of the recommendation in the last report of the Locust Sub-Committee of the Economic Advisory Council that research on a wide scale should be undertaken to ascertain all possible information of the life history, breeding places, and periodicity of swarms of the desert type of locust. There are several known breeding places of these locusts. One of them is the Red Sea Littoral and the Sudan, and another is the area embracing the northern provinces of Kenya and Italian and British Somaliland. Research is to be centred on these two areas for the present.
Next week the Locust Sub-Committee of the Economic Advisory Council will consider the appointment of two entomologists at present in the service of the Sudan Government to assist the work in that area. The work, though financed at the outset for one year, has been planned to cover a period of five years, and when finished it is expected to yield the most authoritative work on locusts ever undertaken. The cost of the inquiry will be small in comparison with the heavy losses suffered by countries which fall victims to invasions by the pest.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
