MOSCOW: Rosselkhoznadzor claimed that ‘in order to prevent the spread of a dangerous object [the stink bug] to the territory of the Russian Federation and to preserve the export potential of the country’, they had decided to introduce ‘temporary restrictions on imports’.
Crops in Abkhazia, and especially its eastern Gali District populated almost exclusively by ethnic Georgians have been devastated by the stink bug. Many farmers abandoned harvesting their hazelnut crops entirely last year.
Earlier this week, Russia’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Dzhambulat Khatuov said that Russia was ready to pay Abkhazia 1,000 ($17) per kilogramme for stink bugs.
According to him, this was necessary to manufacture anti-stink bug pheromone traps, and to ‘study their genetics’. He promised that pheromone traps will be used against stink bugs in Abkhazia, but added that ‘collecting stink bugs manually is by far the most effective measure of combating the pest’.
Russian business daily Vedomosti reported that last year, stink bugs devastated around 70% of Abkhazia’s hazelnut harvest, and more than 50% of the tangerine harvest, resulting in a fall of more than 50% in tangerine exports.
The stink bug has become a severe problem for Georgia’s agricultural sector in recent years. The pest first appeared in Samegrelo and Guria in western Georgia in 2015, where it devastated several crops, particularly hazelnuts, leaving largely hazelnut-dependent locals without incomes. It later spread to broader areas of western Georgia, including Imereti and Adjara, and as far as Tbilisi.
According to Nikoloz Meskhi, head of the Department of Plant Protection at the National Food Agency, each insect can consume more than 300 plants in its lifetime, can fly over long distances, and multiplies very quickly, laying up to 250 egg.
The agency has repeatedly advised against the use of chemicals to fight the bug in houses, instead calling on the public to kill the bugs manually.
