If I remember it correctly, in China Mao ordered sparrow to be killed en masse because they supposedly ate the grain: turns out that what they ate were the pests that attacked the plants.
95% correct, the sparrows were also eating the grain, but removing the natural predator to the far worse pests resulted in far worse famine due to an explosion in population of pests. This was one of the factors that resulted in Mao losing influence in the party over time.
If I remember it correctly, in China Mao ordered sparrow to be killed en masse because they supposedly ate the grain: turns out that what they ate were the pests that attacked the plants.
95% correct, the sparrows were also eating the grain, but removing the natural predator to the far worse pests resulted in far worse famine due to an explosion in population of pests. This was one of the factors that resulted in Mao losing influence in the party over time.