Awa Ndione is a young mother living in the intensive vegetable growing district of Diamniadio, Senegal. For several years she has been growing vegetables on her small plot of land and promoting women’s economic development.

She is an active member of the women’s self-help group Yakaar (Hope), made up of 105 local women. Its main objectives are to bring about real improvements to its members’ living standards, via production of quality fruits and vegetables, and more effective marketing.

Although vegetable growing for local and export markets can be a profitable business, and demand is increasing, smallholder farmers face many obstacles to earning a decent and secure income. Large-scale business enterprises are buying up land and access to scarce water resources. For women it is particularly hard to gain formal, long-term access to land, which is normally under the control of male relatives, or to the finance needed to invest in sustainable and profitable horticulture.

Thanks to training in Integrated Pest & Production Management (IPPM) by PAN Africa during 2001-2003, Awa and her Yakaar colleagues have managed to cut back on the amount of expensive and harmful pesticides used on their vegetables. For example, they now use netting, rather than methamidophos insecticides, to protect tomato and cabbage seedlings from attack of whitefly pests. “Consumers notice the difference; tomatoes produced under IPPM don’t need to be kept in the fridge because they last so much longer”. The IPPM approach means a lot more work but the higher quality produce is not recognized or rewarded in the marketplace.

Senegalese vegetable growers feel they have unfair competition with European growers, who benefit from EU subsidies and have easy access to credit and technical advice. “We’re more than capable of producing good quality vegetables but what we need is that initial help up the first rung of the ladder”, says Awa. To have a better of chance of exporting to Europe, farmer groups like Awa’s need help with cool storage facilities, processing and packing equipment, quality control and recordkeeping. Lack of cool storage is a major problem for smallholders growing a perishable crop. It forces them to sell their produce at rock-bottom prices when the market is glutted, or throw away ripe vegetables when they cannot find a buyer in time. Awa and her colleagues want closer contacts with European importers to help support them to invest in their farming enterprise. This would advance their local market position and improve the quality of their produce. Another challenge is to build market demand among Senegalese consumers for organic and IPPM produce. Awa’s group and 4 other growers associations are working with PAN Africa to develop a national labelling scheme for produce grown with reduced or zero pesticide input.

Dr Francisca Katagira works for the Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture as Principal Agricultural Officer and serves as her country’s Designated National Authority for the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC). The PIC is an important international convention which provides information for developing countries on which pesticides have been banned. It helps government officials take better informed decisions on which pesticides they permit to be imported into their country.

Like many African countries, Tanzania has serious problems in controlling the trade and use of highly toxic pesticides. Dr Katagira knows that farmers use a lot of pesticide unnecessarily; “A farmer having a pest problem can buy the same pesticide under two different [trade] names and then mix them in the same spray tank, thinking that he has applied two different products, and that ends up being an overdose, and again a person uses more money.” Their spraying practice also leaves a lot to be desired. She observed one farmer spraying barefooted, with no shirt, with his wife and a small baby nearby, exposing themselves to contamination and the risk of acute poisoning. “These are the sort of things we need to teach people, so they will know the hazards of pesticide. If these local people can be trained to identify what chemicals they need, and use them cautiously, it can help them to be healthier and save money.”

Collaborating with PAN on practical training has been useful to Dr Katagira and her colleagues. “We are using chemicals, and we have never identified which ones are severely hazardous, we have never notified to the Convention Secretariat any of the pesticides as being hazardous to human health and development, so that it can be included in the PIC process”. She also valued activities bringing together different stakeholders and rural communities to see how pesticide use and harmful impacts may end up contributing to poverty, rather than reducing it. “We even had a meeting with leaders from top level to village level, and everybody was saying that was the first time people from the villages met with the bosses from the regional office and aired their views in discussion with them”.

Joint training sessions with Ministry staff and local NGOs on how to set up community-based health and environmental monitoring is helping Tanzanians work together to identify which particular pesticides and practices are harmful to human health. The Agriculture Ministry recently started a small budget for community-based monitoring in “hot spot” areas, where farmers grow a lot of vegetables with heavy reliance on pesticides, and identified smallholders to train in monitoring techniques. Dr Katagira is keen to tighten up policymaking on which pesticides are permitted in her country. “What we register now, the sustainability of that product in the market will depend on whether it is user-friendly to human health and the environment. If it’s not, we will just de-register it! We want only to use safe chemicals so this is going to be a sustainable activity.... NGOs can be good at awareness creation. They are like watchdogs, and in some areas they can ensure sustainability”.