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The Four Pests campaign was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China. The Great Leap Forward was launched by Mao Zedong in 1958. The main goal of the campaign was to increase China's agricultural and industrial productivity, as well as to promote collective farming and communal living. The government believed that these reforms would help China catch up with the more developed nations of the world. In the four Pests campaign , authorities targeted four pests for elimination: rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. Sparrows were suspected of consuming approximately 2 kg of grain per sparrow per year. Sparrow nests were destroyed, eggs were broken, and chicks were killed. Millions of people organized into groups, and hit noisy pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests, with the goal of causing them to drop dead from exhaustion. In addition to these tactics, citizens also simply shot the birds down from the sky. The campaign depleted the sparrow population, pushing it to near extinction within China which subsequently resulted in surging locust and insect populations that destroyed crops due to a lack of a natural predator. Consequently, China suffered a massive drop in agricultural production which played a role in the Great Chinese Famine. Widely considered the largest famine in human history, the Great Chinese Famine which lasted for three years, between 1959 and 1961, led to an estimated 30 million deaths from starvation, and an estimated 33 million births were lost or postponed. It is one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history.