Some agriculture experts have stressed the need for increased communication advocacy against the misuse of agrochemicals among crop farmers.

The experts made the call in separate interviews on Tuesday in Lagos.

A strategic agriculture communication expert, Ismail Olawale, said there was a communication gap between smallholder farmers in disseminating the inherent dangers in agrochemical misuse.

Mr Olawale reiterated the need to bridge the gap to get the right result in local crop cultivation.

“We need to correct the wrong impression of harmful agrochemicals. There are actually no harmful agrochemicals. The word ‘harmful agrochemicals’ is relative. When agrochemicals are inappropriately applied, expired, or adulterated, they are termed ‘harmful.’

“However, the major problem we have with agrochemical misuse by farmers is the communication gap. We have had a lot of communication advocating for farmers to appropriately apply agrochemicals, patronise genuine dealers, and also check for expired dates and expired produce.

“However, in most instances, more than 70 per cent of Nigerian farmers are smallholder farmers and are not educated to the level of being able to read some of the cautions, some of the dates, and some of the prescriptions on these agrochemicals,” Mr Olawale said.

He also stressed the need for a monitoring, evaluation and prosecution team against the misuse of agrochemicals.

“Most Nigerian farmers get these agrochemicals from the open market, so the sales must be well monitored. Data from last year’s agricultural performance survey across the 36 states of the federation show most farmers complained about getting their agrochemicals from the open market.

“When these farmers get these products from the open market, the dealers may likely sell adulterated or expired agrochemicals. To address the misuse of agrochemicals, we must complement advocacy, communication with monitoring, evaluation and prosecution of dealers who are likely to procure adulterated or expired products.

“Presently, farmers can hardly escape the use of agrochemicals, because human requirements for food are increasing while the population is also increasing,” he said.

He noted that factors such as insecurity, land encroachment, climate change and weak storage facilities result in food wastage.

“Factors like insecurity, land encroachment, climate change, and weak storage facilities, which result in food wastage, will make farmers not stay away completely from the use of chemicals. Farmers may likely want to adopt the planting of crops that will need agrochemicals to quickly backtrack growth to close the span of days or months for harvesting.

“The government should also be able to procure these chemicals genuinely and distribute them to farmers at affordable, subsidised amounts. When the government can do that, there are definitely a large number of farmers who will not want to patronise the open market. No farmer will want to do that.

“If the farmers know that they can get those appropriate chemicals, genuine chemicals, from government agencies like ADP, Ministry of Agriculture, as well as other government agencies, they will not patronise unscrupulous traders,” he said.

An agriculture analyst and co-founder of Corporate Farmers International, Akin Alabi, urged farmers to adopt the use of organic components in crop cultivation.

Mr Alabi said, “Several agendas have been pushed for the past three to four years now to encourage farmers to totally nullify the use of chemicals in crop cultivation. Some agrochemicals have been detected to be quite harmful for human health; we need to encourage use of organic materials or compositions for crop cultivation.

“There are organic components that also serve organic materials to aid crop cultivation, such as urine from Eurasia; we have the urine of rabbits. When properly gathered, they can also be used for cultivation, and there are quite a few of them also that are organically made, though they might be expensive, but organically made ones would also help farmers.

“Also, chemicals are applied to some crop cultivation to address weeding. We need to encourage the use of machinery that would help take out weeds on our farms rather than using chemicals that can affect the crops and subsequently human lives.”

(NAN)