When you go into the grocery nowadays, you will notice a whole bunch of products that are being sold are marked ?organic?, ?free range? and even ?pesticide-free?.  This would usually mean that these products are grown naturally without pesticides and fertilizers and more expensive than the normal product.  If you are buying a fruit or vegetable, the skin of the product would probably not be as perfect or smooth as those the fruits and vegetables you used to buy.  If they were animal products, it would mean the chicken or pig might have been eating GMO-free feeds and were not grown in enclosures.

In the past few years, the Philippine government has been monitoring the use of pesticides in farms to keep the food supply safe for the local consumers. As the Department of Agriculture promotes organic agriculture more, the government has worked with the University of the Philippines to come up with a to tool to ensure that pesticides are not found in organic produce.  As such, the Rapid Test Kit or RTK was developed at the National Crop Protection Center in the University?s Los Banos campus. It detects the presence of organophosphate and carbamate residues on vegetables like okra and asparagus and major export crops like banana, pineapple and mango.   

Aside from pesticide residue on the food products, another direct problem is pesticide exposure on fruit and vegetable farmers. Those who got exposed to fungicides and insecticides suffered the following symptoms:  headaches, muscle pain, cough, weakness, eye pain, chest pain, among others. With all the health impacts on the farming community, it leads us to question whether the use of such pesticides is economically advantageous or not. There have been several researches that correlate pesticide use to increased mortality, depression, abnormalities seen in newborns or spontaneous abortions. But even then, Filipino farmers still think that abundant crops outweigh the health hazards of pesticide use.

Sad to say, Filipino farmers do not have sufficient protection when using pesticides.  For one, they think they are not susceptible to the harmful effects of pesticide use.   We really need to have adequate information campaign among the farmers on the problems connected to pesticide poisoning.  The farmers have to be told very clearly and explicitly how the poisons can enter the human body in the preparation through spraying process and more.  Government and the pesticide industry should be in the forefront of an informational campaign on protection from pesticide poisoning and also enforce the use of protective equipment.