A troop of special Chinese ducks is waiting to be deployed to neighboring Pakistan to fight a swarm of crop-eating pests that threaten regional food security.

At least 100,000 ducks are expected to be sent to Pakistan as early as the second half of this year to combat a desert locust outbreak, according to Lu Lizhi, a senior researcher with the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The ducks are “biological weapons” and can be more effective than pesticide, said Lu, who is in charge of the project in tandem with a university in Pakistan.

“One duck is able to eat more than 200 locusts a day,” Lu said in a telephone interview on Thursday, citing results of experiments to test the ducks’ searching and predation capabilities.

A trial will start in China’s western region of Xinjiang later this year before the ducks are sent to Pakistan, Lu said.

Swarms of desert locusts have been spreading through countries from eastern Africa to South Asia, destroying crops and pastures at a voracious pace. The pest plague, together with unseasonal rain and a scourge of low quality seeds, has hit major crops in Pakistan’s largest producing regions, weighing on its already fragile economy. And it has also migrated into India.

It will be crucial for China, which shares a land border with Pakistan and India, to prevent an invasion. However, China does have some shield in the form of the Himalaya mountains that stand as a barrier between the Indian subcontinent and the Plateau of Tibet.

A group of Chinese agricultural experts visited Pakistan this week to help control the locust outbreaks as the plague moves eastwards, according to a report posted on the website of China’s consulate-general in Karachi.

To gauge how serious a locust attack can be, look to Africa. The cost of fighting desert locusts in the continent’s east has doubled to $128 million, with more countries being affected each day, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said. The situation remains extremely alarming in the Horn of Africa, while there has been a significant movement of swarms over the Arabian Peninsula that reached both sides of the Persian Gulf, the FAO said in its latest locust watch report.

Get The Brief. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Now Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Contact us at letters@time.com.