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Kazakh Agriculture Ministry eyes to use drones to fight locusts

Kazakhstan Materials 24 July 2018 14:21 (UTC +04:00)
Kazakhstan's Ministry of Agriculture will purchase services to remove locusts from territories using drones.
Kazakh Agriculture Ministry eyes to use drones to fight locusts

Baku, Azerbaijan, July 24

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Kazakhstan's Ministry of Agriculture will purchase services to remove locusts from territories using drones, the Kazakh media cited chairperson of the State Inspection Committee in the agro-industrial complex of the Ministry of Agriculture, Azhar Kadzhibekova as saying July 24.

"The hard-to-reach places in Kazakhstan, such as sand, floodplains, must be explored,” she said. “We plan to use drones, unmanned vehicles for inspection. But funds are required to buy services. We do not plan to purchase drones ourselves. We want to purchase services.”

Kadzhibekova added that several manufacturers of drones are solving the issue of the cost of services.

"If they are interested, if they see that it is profitable, then we will involve them in joint work," she said. “This is an interesting project. We explored unmanned vehicles. They can fly long distances. No need for a person to go there. We can send an unmanned vehicle to see if there are locusts."

“Drones must be equipped with cameras, navigation equipment for us to know the coordinates and to be able to remove them [the locusts] from the area,” Kadzhibekova said.

Meanwhile, 1.3 billion tenge have been allocated from Kazakhstan’s budget this year to deal with locusts.

In February, the country’s Ministry of Agriculture predicted a difficult year in dealing with locusts.

(345.68 tenge = $1 on July 24)

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