Heavy rains put a damper on spray­ing op­er­a­tions at agri­cul­tur­al es­tates near Bun­see Trace, Pe­nal on Tues­day as farm­ers con­tin­ue to grap­ple with crop loss­es from an in­fes­ta­tion of lo­custs.

The lo­custs, which are about a cen­time­tre in length, have been gob­bling fields of cas­sa­va, peas, ochroes and bo­di near the forests of Morne Di­a­blo.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat said spray­ing start­ed since Sun­day.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents of Pe­nal Rock said not all the ar­eas are be­ing cov­ered.

Ex­ten­sive spray­ing has start­ed in a bid to erad­i­cate swarms of lo­custs which have al­ready de­stroyed sev­er­al acres of crops at Mendez Vil­lage, Pe­nal.

Res­i­dent Hem­raj See­lal said the lo­custs have been feed­ing off trees in the forests since Jan­u­ary but over the past month, they have start­ed de­stroy­ing fields of peas, cas­sa­va, ochroes and bo­di.

“They eat­ing up the ochro trees. We are fac­ing a lot of loss­es right now,” See­lal said on Mon­day.

Six months af­ter the Au­gust earth­quake ripped apart 50 acres of prime agri­cul­tur­al lands in Los Iros, farm­ers say they have re­ceived no as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment.

Dur­ing a protest at Roy­al En­gi­neer (RE) Road, Erin, farm­ers showed off fields of parched crops.

Pres­i­dent of the Los Iros Hillview Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Reshi­anand Ram­raj said the fields of pro­duce with­ered be­cause most of the ma­jor ponds in the area had dried up. More than 20 ir­ri­ga­tion ponds were dam­aged by the 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake.