Australia has started battling its biggest plague of locusts in decades as billions of the insects hatch along a wide front covering much of the country's central east region.
Ground spraying will be stepped up from next week as dusty, scrubby fields crawl with the 6 millimetre (0.2 inch) hopping baby insects, New South Wales Plague Locust Commissioner Gram Eggleston told Reuters.
A field inspection on Friday showed countless numbers of the week-old insects hopping knee high in fields on the outskirts of Narrabri, a cotton-growing region, 400 km (250 miles) north-west of Sydney.
Officials said the locusts could threaten hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops in the Narrabri district alone. Australia's locust fighters are stepping up efforts to kill the locusts before they start to fly and descend on fields of wheat, barley and canola in the next few weeks.
Rex Simpson, who farms a 3,300-hectare (8,200 acres) spread outside Narrabri, squinted from beneath a weather-beaten bush hat across infested plains, as baby locusts covered the legs of his blue jeans.
"I've been here for 24 years and this is the third lot that I've seen come through," he said. "And this is by far the biggest lot that I've seen in that time."
Eggleston says six helicopter companies and six fixed-wing aircraft companies are on contract to attack the insects with aerial spray if ground control does not kill them first.
The tiny locusts, now about the size of a grain of wheat, will grow 10 times bigger in the next five weeks, after eating five times their body weight a day. A dense 1 sq. km swarm of 40 million insects can eat 10 tonnes of grains a day and travel 500-km a night if weather conditions are right.
Department of Primary Industries information released during on Friday's site inspection showed reported locust hatchlings as of September 16 were concentrated on the Coonabarabran-Narrabri district in central New South Wales.