India ? A rare flowering of wild bamboo plants has caused the rat population to explode in northeastern India, raising fears of famine as the rodents rampage through rice paddies, officials said Thursday.

An alert has been declared in Mizoram state, with authorities supplying rat poison free to nearly 10,000 farmers and paying them to make bamboo traps, said local Agriculture Minister H. Rammawi.

“The situation in Mizoram state is alarming. Farmers are killing rats in tons after we directed them to do so using poison or locally made traps,” Rammawi said.

The rat population is growing rapidly as the rodents feast on flowering wild bamboo plants – a phenomenon that usually occurs roughly every 50 years, Rammawi said. The last time the bamboo flowered in the region, in 1959, a famine ensued, he said.

The state government has invited experts from Australia, Canada and Japan to study the flowering bamboo and devise methods to control the rat population.