Recently I got chance to be in presentation about research done by my Assistant. Professor Min Raj Pokharel from Agriculture and Forestry University themed " Pesticide use status in Vegetable Farming and steps to act in coming days". Probably this might be the first research done to know about pesticide effects, status in village of Nepal and the results just can make you Aww.

 

Pesticides are thought as medicine in rural area of Nepal and they had been practicing like this since years. There can be a reason for such thinking. People are thinking that its beneficial for human beings as it controls pest i.e., enemies of their crops, their food.

 

60 years back (1956 AD) Nepal was an Organic farming land but DDT that has been imported in Nepal to control Malaria became first pesticide in the field. The scenario changed then. Although no any pesticides are manufactured in Nepal, Nepalese use large amount of pesticides from foreign market.

 

Nepal had registered 1561 pesticides of 117 types and it shows Nepal is one of the countries that had registered highest amount of pesticides. 160 trade companies had registered to import pesticides in Nepal. And in last 15 years import rate increased by 7 times and cost by 11 times. Its like grave, we are wasting our money in name of increasing production and we don?t care about presence and absence of pest. Pesticides are killing humans not pest. This is scenario of most of the world where people use pesticides in large amount.

 

Nepal imported 410.3 tons pesticides worth Rs. 57 crores and retailer counts to 10396 registered under government. Nepal uses 396 gm./ha pesticides yearly on an average basis.

 

People use pesticides but they are unknown about basic knowledge about waiting period, safe use of pesticides, effects of pesticides and one triggering thing this research reflected is that, people are spraying pesticide even in absence of pests. It is situation of our farmers, not only farmers but also sellers are unknown about various facts and people practicing pesticides are not literate enough to guide farmers. 90 % people doesn?t follow waiting period.

 

Children, women are more prone to effects of pesticides but in rural part more women are involved in pesticidal practices.40 % women buy pesticides and 36 %are involved in spraying.

 

Death due to use pesticides are also increasing either it is suicidal or accidental.

S.No.	Year	Pesticidal Death	Suicidal Death
1.	2012/13	34%	1342
2.	2013/14	29%	1150
3.	2014/15	24%	1310

 

About 5 % of earning is spent in treatment for ill effects of pesticides. And 12 % among total input in farming is spent for pesticides. Marginal productivity of pesticides is zero in Nepal.

 

The above data shows Nepal is sharing a big market for pesticides but this has zero marginal productivity. It means pesticidal farming and organic farming has same productivity. It's like wastage of money, time and health too. Not only economically, pesticides are slow poison for farmers and so our farmers are most unhealthy among all.

 

This is time, time to fight against pesticidal farming as it doesn't benefits either farmer or consumers but it only benefits producers and sellers. Only focusing on safe use of pesticides doesn?t work, pesticides should be banned. We can take and give examples of many organic states from world like Sikkim.

 

SO I ROAR OUT LOUD " No to pesticides , yes to life".