Nearly half of crop losses in Uganda can be attributed to pests according to some estimates. So farmers must fight pests to sustain productivity.
However, it is not always necessary or even cost effective for farmers to resort to pesticide to fight pests and diseases.
Farmers are strongly advised to carefully balance pesticides with other control methods. Writing in The Conversation, Esther Ndumi Ngumbi, a distinguished researcher, department of entomology, University of Illinois, said: “For African smallholder farmers in particular, pest management needs to be affordable, safe, and sustainable. It should avoid the drawbacks of synthetic pesticides as far as possible. Research is now showing that integrated approaches can achieve these goals.”
Pesticides are poisons and whoever uses them takes a health risk. Yet the crops on which they are applied have some chance of contamination and causing harm to the consumers.
Pesticides cost money, which reduces farmers’ profits. According to the Uganda Biotechnology Information Centre (UBIC) Irish potatoe farmer in Uganda allocate nearly 50 percent of their in-puts to pesticides, fighting the late blight disease.
Potato consumers face the health risk associated with pesticides as farmers suffer reduced profits.
Through biotechnology, Ugandan scientists have come up with Irish potatoes that are resistant to blight disease.
Growing such a variety would save the farmers the trouble and expenditure of using pesticides. But we are still waiting for a regulatory law to guide the growing of the variety.
About two years ago, the army fall worm invaded Africa threatening to wipe out the maize crop.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) gave a comprehensive guide advising farmers to use biological control and local remedies rather than insecticides that should work in an emergency but may be harmful in the longer run.
Biotechnological research has produced pest tolerant maize which can be grown without pesticide.
Ndumi recommends integrated pest management which doesn’t rule out the use of pesticides, but uses them as little as possible and only for strong reasons.
She suggests the use of safer alternatives such as biological control, which uses natural enemies to control pests, and cultural control practices.
