A long-awaited rainfall on Friday has not bring too much joy to the farmers of the drought-hit Lingao County in south China's island province of Hainan, because a large area of their cropland was ruined a locust plague. 

More than 800 mu (53.3 hectares) of seedlings in the county were eaten up by the locusts and the sugarcane fields were also stricken by the plague.

Lingao is not the only place that has been stricken by locusts.

According to statistics from the provincial Department of Agriculture,16 counties and cities in the province, covering an area of 146,700 hectares, have been affected by the plague.

The disastrous locust plague this year is the most severe one in the past two decades, said an official with the provincial plant protection station.

The situation is most serious in the three counties of Wanning, Lingao and Ding'an, with a total of 330,000 mu (22,000 hectares) of farmland submerged by the huge locust swarms.

The locust density reached 500 in every square meter of land, the official said.

"The provincial government is working out effective ways to curb the locust infestation so that the plague will be halted and the crops saved," the official said.

The provincial government has already sent chemistry and biology experts to the areas to control the infestation.

About half of the affected areas are plagued by a kind of locust identified as the "East Asian migratory locust".

They have spread from dry paddy fields to uncultivated sloping lands and sugarcane fields, said the statistics.

East Asian migratory locusts first entered Hainan in the 1960s. The worsening environment has made the plague more and more frequent in recent yeas.

In the meantime, the serious drought that hit the island last year has caused the sugarcane on large areas of land to dry up and die, which is in turn conducive to the propagation of locusts, the official said.

The State Ministry of Agriculture has asked the province to make a report on the locust plague every three days.

(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2005)