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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Why pesticide deaths will continue

Why pesticide deaths will continue

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published Published on Oct 18, 2017   modified Modified on Oct 18, 2017
-GOIMonitor.com

Misleading marketing of farm poisons and tardy regulation are costing lives of farmers and farm hands

AS MANY as 50 persons died and around 1,000 were hospitalised with 25 losing their vision after exposure to chemical fumes from spraying of pesticides in Yevatmal district of Maharashtra.

Most of those affected were farm labourers who neither had any safety apparatus nor were guided on the ideal way to use the pesticides. These cases hence were unlike intentional intake of the pesticide by desperate farmers to end their lives. A fact-finding team of activists and social workers met the affected families and found that such incidents will repeat if the prevailing farming and regulatory practices continue.

A farm worker died while spraying a mix of three different pesticides, a practice not allowed by law. Farmers also prefer higher dosages than recommended by the extension department or pesticide companies.

In some cases, pesticide dealers advised the farmers on this while in others, the farmers themselves came up with combinations. Desperation about saving their infested crops and recovering the substantial investments ever season force these farmers to resort to such misadventures.

What is well known and reinforced from the recent spurt in such incidents is that regulation is not possible at the farmer level. Farm labourers get the raw end of the deal. In 12 of the 18 death cases in Yevatmal district, the victim was spraying on someone else’s agricultural field.

The fact-finding team noted that pesticide spraying wage rates were similar to wages for other agricultural operations. In many cases, the sprayers, did not even know what chemicals they were spraying, in what dosage and whether it was safe or not.
    
In Aarni block, pesticide spraying wages were based on number of tanks sprayed. The workers share their wages with the sprayer owners who spend around Rs 5,500 in buying a sprayer each. At Rs 25 per tank sprayed, Rs 15 goes to the worker and Rs 10 to the sprayer owner. Thus, the current situation ends up exploiting the desperate socio-economic living conditions of agricultural workers and farmers.

Flagging Regulation

The regulation of pesticide industry has always been lacking whether it’s about how the products are marketed and sold, review of chemicals banned in other countries or action against pesticide manufacturers and dealers for malpractices.

There is also the additional matter of pesticide companies coming up with “combination pesticides", and the central regulator allowing such pesticides.

The Indian government had set up a review committee headed by Dr Anupam Verma, former professor at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute, to look into the continuation of 66 pesticides which have been banned or (severely) restricted elsewhere in the world.

However, there were many gaps in the committee report. For instance, glyphosate, which has been banned in a few countries, was not even reviewed by the committee. Each government agency or department in Maharashtra has started blaming each other for the tragedy, but most importantly accused the “ignorant” farmers, failing to recognise that farmers are the victims of the situation.

Please click here to read more.

GOIMonitor.com, 18 October, 2017, https://www.goimonitor.com/story/why-pesticide-deaths-will-continue


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