Threat to land's productivity
Friday, 28 November 2008
Jahangir Hossain
A newspaper report sometime ago was startling and should cause righteous indignation. It stated that police had seized huge quantities of date-barred insecticides with the owner of the company distributing the stuff admitting under police interrogation that he has been selling the date-expired products among the farmers for a long time.
Insecticides are generally disapproved in many countries considering their health hazarding properties. The same are still sold in Bangladesh but reservations exist about their application and lately the official policy seems to be in favour of naturally protective ways of farming without insecticides. In this situation, if insecticides long past the safety period for their use, are extensively used, then one shudders to think of the human health risks from crops grown with such insecticides and also the toxicity to be caused to soil where the same are applied.
Not only insecticides, Bangladesh appears to have also become a care-free ground for marketing spurious and sub-standard fertilisers. Last year, a big consignment of such fertilisers of a foreign-country origin were seized by the law enforcers. In that case also, confession came from the owners of the seized fertilisers that they have been indulging in such trading for a long time. Frequently, one comes across news of the farmers getting duped and buying sub-standard fertilisers which can have degrading effects on the soil. The sale activities of pesticides are also shot through with similar offences.
Farmers in Bangladesh have been the targets of such abuses and dangerous practices for a long time. They are forced to buy poor quality, soil-degrading and environmentally risky products at high prices. Not only targeted productivity can be a casualty of applying such sub-standard products, these so-called agricultural inputs are also gradually causing otherwise fertile lands to lose their fertility while dangerous toxins are entering the human bodies from consumption of crops raised with such risky substances.
Farming is still the mainstay of sorts for the national economy, notwithstanding its diversification. Productivity going down in the farming sector and for the country to lose one of its traditionally valued biggest assets -- the fertility of its cultivable lands -- must be regarded as a very great loss that calls for taking of immediate countrywide prevention steps against such risks through very stern law enforcement measures.
A newspaper report sometime ago was startling and should cause righteous indignation. It stated that police had seized huge quantities of date-barred insecticides with the owner of the company distributing the stuff admitting under police interrogation that he has been selling the date-expired products among the farmers for a long time.
Insecticides are generally disapproved in many countries considering their health hazarding properties. The same are still sold in Bangladesh but reservations exist about their application and lately the official policy seems to be in favour of naturally protective ways of farming without insecticides. In this situation, if insecticides long past the safety period for their use, are extensively used, then one shudders to think of the human health risks from crops grown with such insecticides and also the toxicity to be caused to soil where the same are applied.
Not only insecticides, Bangladesh appears to have also become a care-free ground for marketing spurious and sub-standard fertilisers. Last year, a big consignment of such fertilisers of a foreign-country origin were seized by the law enforcers. In that case also, confession came from the owners of the seized fertilisers that they have been indulging in such trading for a long time. Frequently, one comes across news of the farmers getting duped and buying sub-standard fertilisers which can have degrading effects on the soil. The sale activities of pesticides are also shot through with similar offences.
Farmers in Bangladesh have been the targets of such abuses and dangerous practices for a long time. They are forced to buy poor quality, soil-degrading and environmentally risky products at high prices. Not only targeted productivity can be a casualty of applying such sub-standard products, these so-called agricultural inputs are also gradually causing otherwise fertile lands to lose their fertility while dangerous toxins are entering the human bodies from consumption of crops raised with such risky substances.
Farming is still the mainstay of sorts for the national economy, notwithstanding its diversification. Productivity going down in the farming sector and for the country to lose one of its traditionally valued biggest assets -- the fertility of its cultivable lands -- must be regarded as a very great loss that calls for taking of immediate countrywide prevention steps against such risks through very stern law enforcement measures.