North China's Inner Mongolia is trying to clean grasshoppers from the fields, as about 266,667 hectares of crops are under threat of the pest, said local authorities.

According to Tao Zhenyuan, vice director of the agricultural and husbandry bureau of Chifeng city, rainfall of this spring was less compared with previous years, so the pest outbreak this year, at the beginning of June, was ten days earlier.

Trained specialists were sent to villages to guide farmers disperse pesticide so as to fight against locusts.

(Xinhua News Agency June 27, 2009)