Because of my professional field, Developmental Disabilities, colleagues frequently send me articles. This particular one pertains to Ecuador, and you may find it of interest.
June 22, 2009
Small farmers and pesticide use in Ecuador
Posted by Mundie
In 2004, a BBC radio programme: Dying to Make a Living told about how potato farmers in Carchi, Ecuador were suffering from serious health problems associated with pesticide use. Many of the pesticides available in Carchi are rated as “highly toxic”. While use of these pesticides is actively promoted in Ecuador and other developing countries, they are greatly restricted in places like Europe and the United States.
Stephen Sherwood defended his PhD research last week at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, based on his ten years’ working with farmers in Carchi. In his thesis, he details his search to understand why farmers continue to use highly toxic pesticides even though they are harmful.
Carchi is considered to be one of the most productive farming regions in the Andes. Farmers there produce 40% of Ecuador’s potatoes in smallholdings that have become more and more intensified since the 1960s. Intensification methods such as use of pesticides have led to soil and biodiversity deteriorating, and productivity is now on the decline.
Sherwood found a conundrum: farmers all believed that they need pesticides in order to have good yields in their potato crops. However, they also saw that pest problems were increasing. At the same time, the majority of the rural people in the area were suffering from neurological damage and many were dying, because of pesticide poisoning - with the most toxic pesticides being responsible for 90 % of the worst health problems.
At first, Sherwood and his colleagues assumed that they needed to provide farmers and policy-makers with better information about the harmful effects of pesticides. He documents in detail their long journey to train farmers on alternatives to toxic pesticide use through Farmer Field Schools, as well as through meetings with industry and government agencies, public education campaigns, radio shows and reports.
But all their efforts failed to get the government to stop promoting the use of (highly toxic) pesticides - and farmers kept going back to these cheap and easily available products as well, even though they knew about viable alternatives.
So, Sherwood found, information is not enough. Too many people benefit from pesticide sales, and therefore do not want to recognise or take responsibility for the problems. In fact, farmers were blamed for their improper use of pesticides. Government and pesticide companies preferred campaigns to promote the safe use of pesticides. Sherwood has found that such "SUP programmes" are ineffective – not only do they reach too few farmers, but they do not focus on the fundamental cause of the problem (high toxicity), focusing rather on managing the effects (ie, to decrease their exposure).
One of his study's conclusions is that farmers will only stop using highly toxic pesticides if the government imposes restrictions on their use - but the government will only do this if it is forced to, by international regulations and control measures.
Also see LEISA article from 2007: It's time to ban highly hazardous pesticides
Download Stephen Sherwood’s thesis: Learning from Carchi: Agricultural Modernisation and the Production of Decline
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