To control the lychee stink bug, 4 counties and cities in Taiwan, China raise the egg-card purchase price to 5 yuan
To control the lychee stink bug, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine stated that in 4 counties and cities - Taichung City, Kaohsiung City, Nantou County and Changhua County - starting from the 1st, the government's purchase price for lychee stink bug egg cards has been adjusted to 5 yuan per card, thereby increasing the public's willingness to help remove lychee stink bug egg cards, and at the same time, by strengthening chemical control measures, reducing the harm caused by the lychee stink bug.
Strengthening control of the lychee stink bug; Taichung will raise the purchase price to 5 yuan
Deputy Director-General of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Zou Huijuan stated that, affected by the warm winter, lychee and longan flowering has been poor in some areas; to avoid farmers' control and management being insufficiently thorough, and to improve the overall effectiveness of pest and disease control for the lychee stink bug, at the end of February the subsidy for chemical control materials was raised from 500 yuan per hectare to 2,000 yuan per hectare. In addition, to increase farmers' willingness to collect lychee stink bug egg cards, starting from the 1st, the egg-card purchase subsidy amount of the governments of 4 counties and cities - Taichung City, Kaohsiung City, Nantou County and Changhua County - has been adjusted from 3 yuan per card to 5 yuan per card.
Lin Hongmin, Section Chief of the Crop Production Section of the Taichung City Agriculture Bureau, stated that Taichung last year became the first in all of Taiwan, China to set a precedent for purchasing egg cards, purchasing a total of 140,000 lychee stink bug egg cards at a price of 2 yuan per card, and that since opening purchases of lychee stink bug egg cards at 3 yuan per card in March and April this year, more than 30,000 lychee stink bug egg cards have been received.
As for the egg-card purchase situation in Changhua County, Su Qihuai, Section Chief of the Agricultural Affairs and Plant Protection Section of the Agriculture Department, said that the egg-card purchase price has been increased from 2 yuan per card to 3 yuan, and that since opening purchases of lychee stink bug egg cards in March this year, 70,387 cards have been purchased; calculated at an average of 14 eggs per card, this has prevented nearly one million lychee stink bugs from hatching.
In addition, because the lychee stink bug situation in the Kaohsiung area this year has been relatively mild, Zhang Yunping, Section Chief of the Plant Disease and Pest Control and Ecological Conservation Section of the Kaohsiung City Agriculture Bureau, said that during the period from February 18 to April 22, about 2,000 lychee stink bug egg cards were received; at present, almost all lychee stink bugs in Kaohsiung City have hatched into nymphs, and coordination will be made with farmers' associations in various places regarding matters related to egg-card purchases; if farmers still provide lychee stink bug egg cards, purchases will continue.
