Some thoughts on Plague Locusts

There have been a some posts on the "Nature of Robertson" (links will follow) about the upcoming locust plague and proposals to aerial spray the swarms.

I watched the video attached to this post on this topic and read Eris O'Brien website (and a few other things).  I then scored points for spraying and points against spraying.  To continue the sporting metaphor, realising this might annoy a few folk, this came out 7:2 against spraying (Julie from the Mallee got a red card in the first minute.)

The major score 'for' spraying came about because Eris O'Brien didn't really have an alternative, other than 'do nothing': his options about heavy rollers etc are unrealistic in most cases and are not applicable to National Parks etc.  He suggests:

1. the plague would only last a short time, which causes me to think "Yes, animals die when they run out of food."; and 
2. Ibises would eat the locusts - again unrealistic as there are not enough ibises for this task.

Disregarding 'spin' about cancelling the Melbourne Cup there would seem to be some serious problems for large parts of the rural communities on Western Victoria (and NSW) coming down the pipe. What I would like to see is some evidence of what would really happen if nothing was done. While I suspect no-one knows this, the references to Silent Spring in the context of massive spraying do not seem to be an excessive comment on the impact of spraying. 

In either case spending $43.5m is relatively trivial.  It is:

• slightly less than 0.1% of the Commonwealth Health Budget; or
• almost exactly 0.1% of the farm-gate value of Australian Agriculture.