Saturday, December 08, 2007 Ledesma: Back to pesticide By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
THIS has nothing to do with the aerial spray ban but everything to do with what the protagonists, to include the pan-handling NGOs, failed to do after the court issued the ban. It appears that after the court has rendered its judgment, the city government and the environmental activists simply contented itself with the verdict and have not come up with anything perceptible to help farmers the proper use and handling of pesticides. Their concern therefore was nothing but self-serving empty rhetoric.
The thunder and brouhaha over the aerial spray issue actually diverted and subordinated the more serious health and environmental concerns. What had been deliberately forgotten is the fact that of the more than 100,0000 hectares of arable and cultivated lands in Davao City less than 10,000 hectares of these are planted to Cavendish bananas, pineapple areas included. Not all of these Cavendish plantations are actually being subjected to aerial spray.
If you ask me however, the matter of application of pesticides is the least of my concern. It is the kind of pesticides and herbicides and the manner of application, handling and disposing of the containers and leftovers of these chemicals that are the primordial issues of concern.
The ban did not cure the malaise.
The problem with the NGOs is that they mainly focused on the issue that will make them good to their donors. The banana group on the other hand is stiff- drunk with their corporate bigotry thinking maybe that since they have the economic power they can terrorize everybody. They feel that anyone who does not recognize that can always go to court. Well, that's exactly what happened.
In the case of the FPA, the agency merely stood by the side with its arms akimbo like idle spectators, did nothing to educate the public and help members of the Provincial Board of Davao by giving them crash education on the whys and wherefores of agri-chemicals to liberate them from their ignorance.
After all the deliberations in the council and in the court, (where a supposed expert witness said that virus is a living organism) all the way to when the court rendered its judgment, nobody ever took cognizance of the fact that the more hazardous and lethal chemicals are those actually being used by thousands of vegetable, rice and corn farmers and fruit tree growers in the vast expanse of thousands of hectares around us. After all the dramatics about organic farming, the ugly fact remains that 99.9 percent of our farmers use chemicals that are indubitably toxic. So lethal are these chemicals that fungicides used in Cavendish bananas would taste like soft drinks by comparison.
But what has been done by the government and the NGOs to mitigate the effects of these hazardous chemicals among our farmers? Absolutely nothing. The farmers are on their own. Unfortunately or fortunately they are not the favorite subject of "environmentalist militants" because their stories are not the kind of stuffs that sell to donor foundations.
If the environmentalists are more circumspect about their attack on corporate plantations, I suggest they focus on the more substantive issue. They should look closer at the highly toxic chemicals used by farmers and corporate farms that are classified under Class I. Remember that incident in Tadeco where school children were rushed to hospitals because they fainted when they sniffed chemical discharge? That came from a deadly poisonous pesticide known to the industry as mocap. The nematicide is a target chemical for nematodes which attack the root system of bananas and other plants. Mocap falls under Toxicity Class I and should therefore be handled carefully like most agricultural chemicals that are available in the market. As a rule, Class I chemicals always have a skull (bungo) prominently printed in red both in the labels and on the packaging materials.
The fungicide that we are raving about like mad belongs to Toxicity Class IV. The labels and packaging materials are usually in green to denote that its toxicity is very low. Before I proceed, let me point out that what happened in Tadeco was an accident. There was a spill but this was immediately contained. The farm technicians in Tadeco as well as the workers who apply the chemical nematicide are trained and supervised closely by management. Unfortunately under ordinary farmers condition very few knows the impact of the chemical pesticides which they are handling. It is on this aspect that I suggest the local government and the NGOs should do their "intervention."
Furthermore, the NGOs ought to expand their research. For example, there are biological nematicides that are available in the market. There has been no mention among the proponents of organic farming about the efficacy of chicken manure in controlling nematodes. In Latin American countries, Australia and in South Africa that have started to apply a nematicide with a brand name BIOACT WG. The problem with corporate farms is that they are adamant to shift to this “wetable” biocide because they had been so used to chemical nematicide like mocap. But trials had been made and I know of one pomelo grower who intensively uses Bioact WG because it did not only control the spread of nematodes but also improved the root system of his pomelos. If you think I am kidding go ask the grower of the famous "Golden pomelos."
Plant pathologists that I interviewed agreed that biological nematicides have evolved but even then the cycle of applications must still be interspersed with target chemical pesticides. Later on when the applications of biological pesticides become widespread there might come a time when farms will be weaned from inorganic pesticides. Who knows?
Meantime, let us put a stop to this dramatic razzmatazz on the hazards of fungicides that are sprayed on bananas. But yes, I will repeat and enunciate my stand against the aerial spray application of pesticides, even if you say it's nothing but fungicide, around the environs of Reverend Apollo C. Quiboloy's prayer mountain. You may not believe in what he preached, but that Covenant Mountain has to be spared from industrial mists for it is truly a hallowed ground.
