Putting farmers' lives on the line

The news that 60 per cent of the country's cancer patients are farmers is highly concerning. Then why do the overwhelming majority of cancer patients come from the farming community? To go by the disclosure Fisheries and Livestock Adviser Farida Akhter made at a national dialogue, this is so "because of their prolonged exposure to pesticides". Farmers do not take adequate precaution before mixing and spraying the pest-killing chemical substances on crops. They mishandle the poisonous chemicals with carcinogenic properties. What it tells about the agricultural practices in this country is, therefore, pathetic. Little educated or not at all educated, farmers who work their lands are mostly unaware of the danger of the exposure to pesticide and it is obvious the field-level agriculture officers have failed to inform farmers of the risk they run or if informed, could not convince the former.

Organised by the Bangladesh Agricultural Farm Workers Federation, the dialogue titled "Inclusive Labour Laws with International Standard and Legal Recognition of Workers in Agriculture and Informal Economic Sectors", focuses on a highly important but neglected issue. Although the title conveys the intended meaning, it would be correct to write 'Inclusive Labour Laws of international Standard'. The idea is to raise the country's labour laws to the globally accepted level and bringing the informal sector including agriculture under legal coverage. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics' latest estimate, 45.4 per cent of the country's total workforce is employed in agriculture but these workers do not have official recognition as such and fail to enjoy any benefit like their industrial counterparts. This is one of the reasons behind marginalisation of landless peasants and their migration to urban centres for livelihoods. That there is, of late, a shortage of agricultural labourers during sowing of seeds, planting and harvesting owes to the exodus of labour hands from villages to cities.

Agricultural labourers, unlike farm workers in developed economies, receive no training for their adaptation to new technology and application of inputs including chemical fertilisers and pesticides. There is no official campaign for putting on protective gears before handling and spraying pesticides in the crop field. The hired labourers certainly cannot afford such gears but if it was made mandatory for landowners to provide for such gears, the poor farmers did not have to suffer a dreaded disease like cancer due to exposure to the hazardous substances. When a person feels no hesitation to manually spray pesticides from a canister without using even a mask, it speaks volumes for the general ignorance and also indifference to workers' health and well-being.

Such callousness is unacceptable. Here the victims are the poorest people of society who have no means to afford costs of medical treatment of any serious disease, let alone cancer. Had there been formal recognition of their labour and their works involving in particular the application of harmful agents such as chemical fertilisers and pesticides, the poor peasants would not be exposed to those substances. Their chances of getting cancer from such exposure would be minimised. Again, legal coverage such as group life insurance can be introduced for meeting their medical expenses. If farmers became so aware of the danger, they could easily be convinced of the merit of using right doses of fertilisers and pesticides and also of the time gap so essential for harvesting crops. Thus the presence of fertiliser and pesticide residues in the food chain could be avoided to largely ensure food safety.