Protecting Crops

Reaz Ahmad

PESTS are small insects that can cause colossal losses to crops, but many of them are not necessarily harmful to agricultural produce. The friendly ones are not only useful to the overall crop production process but also occasionally act as deterrents to the ill-effects of the harmful ones. It has always been a big challenge for growers to protect crops from pest attacks. For centuries, farmers have been practicing natural, biological and also chemical ways of protecting their produce from pest attacks. Farmers in a particular farming neighbourhood create an environment so that friendly insects outnumber the harmful ones and protect the crops in a very natural way. Integrated pest management and bio-pest management are also in vogue now. Yet, we can't just ignore the application of chemical pesticides as another recognised way of fighting the little predators. In our part of the world, chemical pesticides have been used to protect crops from pest attacks since 1956. For over two decades or so, the government, though on a limited scale, used to import pesticides and distribute them among the farmers. Then came the era of commercial marketing of pesticides with both public and private companies entering the burgeoning pesticide market with a wide range of products -- which are not limited to pesticides but also include different brands of fungicides and weed killers too. The sales of pesticides saw almost 300% rise from the mid '90s till now in Bangladesh. This emphasises the fact that farmers are more desperate now than ever before to protect their crops from pest damage and gain more output. More actors are in play now in the pesticide business, but the menace of pests of various genres and types is growing. The pro-environment activists and defenders of nature's biological equilibrium apart, others may not mind judicious application of chemical pesticides in crop fields as long as that puts more grains in our bowls and better fortune to crop growers. But, here the main catch is best practices. Despite having different pesticide regulatory set-ups in place, our poor farmers are still highly vulnerable to marketing of low-quality, unregistered and smuggled date-expired pesticides. Often, the companies do not care to educate their product users about the optimum level of pesticide usage, application process, timing and frequency, and safety aspects. Thanks to the probe undertaken by the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), we have come to know how the excessive use of pesticides has been taking toll of human and animal lives in our villages. This newspaper reported in its May 5 issue that excessive use of pesticides on farmlands in two villages of Dhamrai upazila caused the death of at least three children in April this year. It also killed a number of calves, dogs and fowls. Besides, the report says, 13 more children were hospitalised. We can't afford to protect our crops at the cost of our children's lives. While we welcome the IEDCR's move of launching an awareness campaign about pesticides in those two villages and sending biological and environmental samples -- including blood, urine, stool, cough and breast milk from villagers -- abroad for further tests, the issue here definitely demands more regulatory, legal and advocacy actions from the concerned government agencies. There is a pesticide technical advisory committee in place, there is an association of pesticide marketers and producers in Bangladesh, there are thousands of agriculture extension staff across the country, and they all should play their respective parts now so that best practice can be ensured in applying the proper and timely doses of pesticides.Often, we see farmers applying pesticides without using proper protective equipment, thereby exposing themselves to poisonous pesticides and their residues. Sometimes farmers, totally unaware of serious consequences, apply pesticides even on the very day they would be plucking the produce from the trees. Such last-moment spraying of pesticides is a serious health threat for the consumers. The government as well as the pesticide producers, marketers and distributors have now got a huge collective responsibility to educate the pesticide users about integrated pest management, proper doses and pesticide application safety measures, and also to get rid of fake, adulterated, unregistered and smuggled pesticides. The government must ensure that no unsafe pesticides are on sale or in use, and also update its list of legally authorised pesticides upon a renewed test of hazardous elements in each of those. Besides, there should be a concerted move to promote other alternative best practices in pest control. For instance, promotion of pheromone can be a better way out from the curse of chemical pesticides damaging our agro-ecological landscape. Pheromone is a small chemical capsule in a plastic bottle half-filled with water. It works wonders -- insects flock to the bottle to drown. Pheromone is the female sex hormone of insects that attracts the male. So, the time is ripe now to look for alternatives and further diversify the tactics of fighting against pests, and also to make sure that chemical pesticides are applied in proper doses and at proper times.