25 August 2025. Boyd Webb, AgForce Sheep, Wool and Goat President.
It’s time to voice the concerns of many central and north-west Queensland graziers with regard to the locust plague that is emerging and already wreaking havoc out west.
There’s a great deal of frustration over the amount of time it has taken for Biosecurity Queensland to get out to graziers on the ground around Muttaburra and Corfield.
Locusts have been in this region for a couple of months now, and have taken a firm hold in that time. But it was only in the last two weeks that the Department of Primary Industries sent people out to talk to producers when they should’ve been there far earlier to stop the infestation getting to this stage.
AgForce has gone directly to the Prime Minister and his office, urging that unspent federal funding be redirected urgently into battling this locust outbreak.
There’s a number of aspects that need review about the response to this.
There needs to be urgent changes to the terms of the Plague Pest Contingency Fund (PPCF). It needs to be upgraded to reflect the current day situation and the increased overheads of controlling this destructive pest.
The PPCF doesn’t cover all the shires that are affected. There needs to be a review of the fund which is currently capped at $500k and explore the possibilities to expand it to include the western shires that are not currently part of the program.
It’s important that graziers are involved in containing this, but the cost of control measures is expensive, and with little to no resources on hand to assist with coordination, more support should be allocated so they can undertake critical control works.
These current locust swarms are eating great swathes of country and could potentially become a much greater problem.
There’s already reports of locust swarms now appearing in cropping country to the north of Richmond. And they will continue to breed and spread unless urgent action is taken.
I urge all primary producers affected by this scourge to not give up. While it’s frustrating that DPI have taken so long to get to affected areas – it’s vital that producers keep reporting where the locusts are and what you’re seeing on the ground so that Biosecurity Queensland can take appropriate action. If they don’t know where the locusts are – they can’t act.