Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations with the financial support of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is implementing a project on “Enhancing Food and Nutrition Security of Locust Affected Smallholder Farmers and Control Operations”. This project has been designed in the backdrop of desert locusts spread during 2019 and 2020 and its fallout on small-scale farmers’ farming operations in the most marginalized areas of the country. The project mainly focuses on supporting the livelihoods of desert locust-affected farming communities and enhancing the food security of smallholder farmers’ households in the worst affected areas/districts in Balochistan and Sindh provinces. The project also has a specific component for enhancing institutional technical capacity in desert locust surveillance and control operations.
For enhancing the technical capacity of concerned professionals from the Department of Plant Protection, provincial agriculture departments, private sector pesticide companies, and other stakeholders, FAO in collaboration with the Federal Department of Plant Protection (DPP) has organized a training program on “Desert Locust Biology, Surveillance, and Control Strategy”. In this regard a training workshop was held on 07-09 July 2021 at Cholistan Desert & Islamia University Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur. This training program has greatly contributed to the up-gradation of technical expertise of newly inducted professionals/Entomologists in the Federal Department of Plant Protection (DPP).
