VICTORIA is experiencing its biggest locust outbreak in nearly 40 years, with the state's farmers bracing for financial losses in the millions of dollars.
Millions of locusts have flown across the Murray River from New South Wales into Victoria in recent weeks, while adults already in Victoria have bred, lifting numbers. Migrating locusts have crossed the Murray in a stretch covering hundreds of kilometres, from west of Mildura to as far east as Albury.
The greatest concentrations have been found in north-west Victoria, the southern Riverina and south-west NSW, and in South Australia's Riverland. Those in Victoria's north-west are believed to have come from the Menindee Lakes.
Massive damage to crops has already occurred in Victoria's north-west and over the border. Young canola, carrot and oat crops have been eaten in a day.
The Lamattina family from Wemen lost more than $500,000 of carrot production on Sunday to locusts. Phillip Lamattina said locusts ate about 150 acres of seedlings.
''You've got to see it to believe it,'' he said. ''One centre pivot [plantation] got destroyed completely. We had about 25 million carrots in there. That gives you an idea of how many locusts there are.''
The Lamattinas are one of Australia's biggest carrot producers. Mr Lamattina said their production would be cut by about 4000 tonnes and this would ''tighten'' carrot supply in eastern Australia later this year. ''This is an absolute disaster,'' he said.
On Tuesday a meeting of Department of Primary Industries officials was told of the severe impact on canola crops. Gordon Berg, Victoria's Plague Locust Commissioner, told The Age that farmers had described ''something like 8000 hectares of canola basically vanishing in a day''.
Grazing pasture has also been hit. ''The area of pasture affected could get up to around 50,000 hectares,'' he said.
The outbreak has been a double blow to farmer Colin Hunt at Merbein South, near Mildura. Locusts devastated 200 hectares of oats that were to be used as stock feed.
Mr Hunt is also ready to sow wheat, but is worried that locusts could eat the seedlings. But delaying sowing potentially cuts crop yields. ''We're ready to start sowing our cereals and we're not sure what we should be doing,'' he said.
Locusts have been reported in Melbourne suburbs and as far south as Shoreham, Maffra, Paynesville and Portland.
Australian Plague Locust Commission director Chris Adriaansen said more than 200,000 hectares in NSW had been sprayed to fight locusts. Efforts were now concentrated on mapping where hatchings would occur to identify where spraying should be done.
He described the outbreak as a ''very substantial infestation spread across a rather large part of inland Australia''. In some cases densities were ''fairly substantial''.
Coalition agriculture spokesman Peter Walsh accused the state government of not spending enough on locust control.
But Agriculture Minister Joe Helper said the government was committed to fighting locusts. ''The government will continue to respond and support landowners and the public in controlling locusts,'' he said.
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