On 30th May, the caretaker cabinet directed authorities to crack down on adulterated pesticides in a bid to support the ongoing cotton cultivation campaign across the province.
Multiple departments including Special Branch, Local Police, Agriculture Extension, Plant Protection, and Pest Warning are part of the campaign.
Reportedly, someone briefed the Secretary of Agriculture that perhaps pesticide adulteration is the reason behind the fall of cotton in Punjab, but the action brought a province-wide strike by the Punjab Pesticide Dealers Association (PPDA) on Saturday.
Although the strike was called off on Tuesday, the matters are still undecided with a meeting scheduled for Saturday between the Governments Plant Protection Department and PPDA, Pakistan Crop Protection Association (PCPA) which represents local companies, and Pakistan Crop Life which stands for multinationals operating in the space.
“Private sector plays a huge role in agriculture growth, but authorities are harassing and arresting pesticide dealers illegally” commented Nadeem Mushtaq Ramay Additional Secretary General PPDA. He claimed that government collects 10,000 samples yearly and finds 97 percent purity while other crops reported no decline in production due to adulteration.
He also recalled that representatives of three major aforementioned organizations had worked out a legal framework with the government to address the matter, but there has been no legislation on it, and it’s still using the old SOPs.
Pesticide dealers argue that they are always there for farmers to provide chemicals on loans which is not entirely a lie. Amid the government’s failure to provide easy access to credit to farmers, these dealers are often the only ones to provide farmers with agricultural products without any regulatory framework for recovery.
They argue that government should limit its raids and cases to real culprits as most of the current cases and the materials seized are either impure by a few percentage points or are expired and waiting in stores to be picked up by the companies that happen on several months period.
On the other hand, the case of adulterated pesticides is as genuine as it comes especially in the remote areas where these crackdowns and campaigns have the least outreach. Knowing the victims of such products personally, I can affirm the fact that farmers who have limited purchasing power, are low on cash, and cannot travel to cities end up at the hands of these adulterated products.
These pesticides are imported in large quantities through legitimate private firms and are then diluted by the other local manufacturers and the practice is uniform across liquid fertilizers of trace minerals like Zinc, Boran, humic acid, and even Potash.
The authenticity of provincial agricultural laboratories is questionable at the least and nobody from the agriculture department or the laboratories themselves would authenticate their results in private conversations.
“There is an obvious lack of research and testing standards within government as chemicals often kill the plant but not the pest it is supposed to attack” commented Zafar Tahir, Secretary General All Pakistan Kisaan Ittehad.
He argued that other crop seeds like Maize are imported and inherently perform better against pests while our productivity of Wheat, Rice, and Sugarcane is far lower in comparison to the region. What he meant to say was that the so-called ‘success’ of other crops does not necessarily prove the authenticity of the pesticides.
What is strange to believe being a small part of this system is that local administrations are unaware of where these supposedly adulterated pesticides are manufactured, but why the root cause is not fixed, and pesticide dealers are raided, fined, and arrested is not hard to understand.
These activities cannot possibly take place without the proper ‘supervision’ of the local establishment. There are reports of authorities’ silence on illicit fertilizer manufacturers due to pressure from the Rahim Yar Khan Chambers of Commerce (RYKCCI) while in another case supposedly imprisoned dealers can be found doing business as usual, reports which were denied by the local administration.
Obviously, if the problem will be fixed what anyone will have to show for their bosses? It is an easy way to report performance in terms of raids, fines, and cases than to actually deliver some value to farmers.
Secondly, all these raids and crackdowns are pointless unless the government addresses the quality standards of its own testing laboratories and research institutions. We contacted Punjab Agriculture Department for comments, but there has been no response till the filing of this piece.
How hard it is in this age of technology to trace back the components to the source if local police are unaware of the manufacturers (unlikely)? How hard it is to develop a way to authenticate every bottle being sold to farmers through some tempering proof irreplicable stickers with hidden security features.
Answer? A lot if it means you lose your value and control over the process that benefits everyone and only harms the farmer.