Sounds exactly like a China thing.

The great leap forward was such a colossal clusterfuck that you can't blame it on any one thing (although most of them would be prevented without the authoritarianism). Literally everything was wrong. Sparrows, lysenkoism, forced collectivization (basically, and perhaps ironically, farmers not owning the means of production), Mao just being evil, backyard burners, rigid chain of command that gave the chairman absolute authority but at the same prevented him from knowing what was going on, everything.

One of the best examples of unintended consequences, aiding in one of the largest human caused disasters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

I vaguely remember reading about that when I was younger. I don't know if it's true, but this is what I read.

The peasants and farmers were made to stand in the fields throwing stones at the sparrows, preventing them from landing. The thinking was that the sparrows would die from exhaustion, if they weren't killed by the stones.

What actually happened was that the existing crops were either trampled or broken by the stones, and as the farmers weren't working the fields, nothing grew the following year either.

Like I say, I have no idea whether it's true, or if it was just 80's anti communist propaganda, but it's stuck in my head ever since.

Sounds similar to what we did in Australia.