Ghana goes for IPM

Ghanaian farmers frequently expose their families, themselves and consumers of their produce to severe pesticide hazards, but the Ghanaian authorities are also taking a lead in implementing sustainable agriculture. Mark Davis reports on his findings from a recent visit.

Akumadan is a typical central Ghanaian township with a population of about 15-18,000. Under the Ghanaian traditional land tenure system, every member of a clan or family is entitled to farm a portion of its hereditary lands. In Akumadan, where between 1-2,000 polygamous families farm 2-3 acres each, every single member of the community is included in the workforce, even if they have other employment.
    The Akumadan farmers have access to as much land as they want around their township, with the exception of protected forest areas. They have cleared their plots from the semi deciduous rainforest which used to cover the landscape, and grow a variety of vegetables, grains, roots and pulses. Their most important crop is tomatoes, and buyers come from the city to buy their tomatoes at a price negotiated weekly by the Growers' Association. They also grow maize, cowpea, garden egg (miniature eggplant), chilli, peanuts, cassava, yam and inevitably for most Ghanaian farmers, some cocoa.

Chairman of the Akumadan Tomato Growers' Association selling produce on the roadside

    The division of labour in the community is clear with women responsible for planting and harvesting the crops and the men dealing with land preparation, chemical application and management. Chemical treatment starts two weeks after the tomatoes are planted out. A chemical fertiliser is applied to help counter the rapidly declining fertility of the rainforest soil. When the population was smaller, farmers could leave plots which lost their fertility to allow the natural vegetation to regenerate and the soil fertility to increase slowly. They would return to these plots after several years, clear them and farm again for a few years until fertility again declined. Now rotations, if they exist at all, are much shorter, with plots being allowed to lie fallow for three years at most. Chemical fertilisers help, but yields are not particularly good.

Pesticide problems
After fertilisers have been applied the crop needs to be protected from pest attack. Their primary concern is insect attack, and on the advice of an extension officer who last came to Akumadan in the mid 1970s the farmers take a bottle or packet each of the pesticides Diathan (unidentified), Karate (lambda-cyhalothrin), Topsin-M (thiophanate methyl), Kocide (copper hydroxide), BBS (Bordeaux mixture), Dithane M-45 (EBDC (mancozeb), and the fertilisers Growfore and Sampi. These are all fungicides except for Karate, and are therefore largely ineffective against the pests which concern the farmers most. They used to use Duta (fentin hydroxide) until it was withdrawn, so on the advice of the pesticide salesman they replaced it with thiophanate methyl. The chemicals are mixed in a 200 litre drum with water and stirred with a big stick. A bucket is dipped in with bare hands to draw out the mixture which is tipped into a knapsack sprayer and applied to the crop every week. If a single pest appears on the tomato plants, the application frequency is increased to twice each week. A farmer will spend 600,000 Cedis per acre on pesticides (currently US$300). The income from tomatoes will typically be between 500,000 and 3,000,000 Cedis per acre (US$250 - 1,500).

Health problems
The men of Akumadan know that they should use some protective equipment, but they do not. It is expensive and uncomfortable, and the only protective masks being sold were simple dust masks which would offer only very limited protection from pesticides. Their knapsack sprayers often leak and it is common for the sprayers to have skin rashes, headaches, and dizziness for a few days after they have sprayed. Occasionally a young man spraying the fields will literally drop dead. The farmers believe this is because the wind was blowing the pesticides on to the applicator. There are rumours in Ghana that pesticides have been causing infertility. The men of Akumadan said that fertility is a matter of intense pride and infertility would never be discussed openly, but they are aware that despite improvements in medical care in recent years, the number of miscarriages and stillbirths has increased dramatically.
    The description of farming techniques used in Akumadan is typical of agriculture all over Ghana where up to 80% of the population are occupied at least some of the time in farming activities. Pesticides are used extensively with little regard for the appropriateness of the products to the pests or for the hazards which pesticides pose. The extension service is under-resourced, under staffed and in some areas at least, poorly informed of developments. The farmers in turn are even less well informed and in the long periods when no extension advice is available, will improvise with whatever chemicals are available.

Pesticides legislation
The Ghanaian government has recently enacted the Pesticides Control and Management Act, 1996, which has apparently been in draft form since the 1970s. This puts in place legislation for the registration and control of pesticides imports, sale and use. Commentators believe it will have little impact on cross boundary transfer of pesticides.

Pesticides on sale in Kumasi, Ashanti region

In one visit to an agricultural supplies shop (see Kumasi photo), about one third of products on the shelves were labelled in French, meaning that they had been bought in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire or further afield where the products are cheaper. The assistants willingly showed me the range of products which they sold to local farmers which included products purchased by the Cotton Board for use only on cotton and similar pesticides for cocoa and coffee which were sold for use on all crops. The organochlorine endosulfan seemed particularly popular as did the herbicide paraquat. Advice from the sales team to farmers included dose rates which were the same for all pesticides regardless of product concentration or recommended dose rates. The label on one Japanese product, Trebon, from the company Mitsui Toatsu, included the statement "is a new type of insecticide to be composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen only". It failed to mention that the statement is also true of some very toxic compounds such as the anti-coagulant rodenticides difenacoum and coumatetryl, or that the active ingredient of Trebon, etofenprox, is a WHO hazard class III pesticide.
    There are moves to develop regional controls on pesticide trade, but these are a long way off. The Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency has also recently completed an analysis of its chemical management capacity under the auspices of the UNITAR pilot programme to assist countries implementing National Action Programmes for Integrated Chemicals Management. This review together with the recently enacted legislation will, it is hoped allow pesticide imports, sale and use to be more tightly regulated.
    In a move triggered by the process of economic reform, currently in its eleventh year in Ghana, the government recently removed subsidies from all pesticides. Pesticides used on export crops, particularly cocoa were heavily subsidised, and as was already mentioned pesticides designated for use on particular crops are widely sold for general use. It is unclear whether removal of subsidies will reduce pesticide use, since most farmers have been advised in recent years to be heavily dependent on them. The rise in prices may force farmers to reduce dose rates thereby increasing pest resistance problems, or to spend more on inputs so reducing their margins.

Sustainable agriculture
While the majority of Ghanaian farmers use similar production systems to those in Akumadan, there is significant progress in the promotion of sustainable agricultural systems in some areas. In the interests primarily of preserving the forests and improving the economic situation of farmers, many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are helping farmers to learn agroforestry, IPM, organic farming, permaculture and other variations on sustainable agricultural themes.
    Emmanuel Antwi, Co-ordinator of the Ghana Organic Agriculture Network (GOAN) is working in the central region to provide farmers with a viable alternative to intensive chemical based cultivation. Kojo Odai from Kumasi runs one of the GOAN demonstration farms. He converted his peri-urban vegetable farm to organic production in 1995. Using composted chicken manure for fertiliser, and neem, Bacillus thuringiensis and garlic extract for pest control, Kojo grows cabbages, corn, lettuce and onions which look significantly healthier than those in adjacent fields where chemical fertilisers and pesticides are being applied (see photo below). NGO networks including ECASARD in the south and ACDEP in the north, and individual NGOs such as Friends of the Earth and Green Earth are supporting similar projects around the country.

Cabbages produced with pesticides	Cabbages produced without pesticides

IPM programmes
The Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) has also shown enthusiastic support for a Farmer Participatory IPM pilot programme in rice cultivation. This has been running since 1995 at Dawhenya in Northern Ghana and was the first attempt by FAO to transfer the experience of the South East Asian Rice IPM programme to another region. The success in rice had led MOFA extension staff who had been trained as IPM trainers to extend the IPM techniques to other crops such as cowpea and cassava.
    There has been some criticism by NGOs of the choice of rice as a crop on which to trial IPM in Ghana since it is a minor crop in terms of both land area cultivated and quantity produced. However, rice is the crop in which the most experience of farmer participatory IPM has been gathered. Ghana is also a net importer of rice from the US and Asia where it is produced cheaply. Expanding local production of high quality cheap rice would benefit the Ghanaian economy as well as introducing the concept and practice of farmer participatory IPM.
    In support of the principle of IPM, the Ghanaian MOFA has appointed a National IPM Co-ordinator, Prof. Kwameh Afreh-Nuama, seconded from the University of Legon, who heads the National IPM Committee. The Government also provides a budget of 50 million Cedis (US$25,000), and the MOFA extension service supports the IPM initiative within its existing work programme and budgets.
    In order for an IPM programme to succeed, previous experience suggests that there must be government and institutional support, research and extension capacity, a willingness to support IPM, and there must be a clear definition of the problems which need to be addressed. These exist in Ghana, but only an injection of external expertise and funds could bring about an expansion of the existing IPM programme in the direction which had been identified locally as a priority.
    Now, the recently established Global IPM Facility has selected Ghana as one of the first countries where a major new farmer participatory IPM programme is to be implemented. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) will fund a three year programme to train 50 trainers who in turn will train 2-3,000 farmers. An infrastructure will be established which will be capable of training 500 farmers annually. The focus for the programme will be vegetables with tomatoes and cabbage identified as top priorities because of their importance in the local diet and the high level of pesticides used on them. The existing rice programme will continue and be developed, and future priorities including cotton and plantain have also been identified.
    The choice of rice and vegetables as focuses for IPM programmes reflect existing knowledge and experience as well as concern for growers and local consumers. Success with these crops will hopefully lead to farmer participatory IPM in other major crops. The most important crop in terms of land area cultivated and contribution to the economy is cocoa. Other important crops include cassava, yams, maize, plantains and bananas for local consumption and rubber, pineapples, oil palm and coffee as export crops.

Conclusion
MOFA acknowledges that its existing resources will not allow it to implement the IPM programme on the scale and in the time proposed for this programme; currently one extension officer serves about 3,000 farmers. It has therefore called upon NGOs to help by providing candidates to become IPM trainers. In August a workshop in Accra brought together NGOs who are working on the implementation of sustainable agriculture, MOFA officials charged with implementing the UNDP funded IPM programme and representatives of other interested bodies. Bridges were built between the traditionally mistrustful camps of NGOs and Government with the conclusion that NGOs will be represented on the National IPM Committee, and that NGOs would be keen to participate in the programme by providing candidates as trainers.
    Will the tomato farmers of Akumadan benefit from the new IPM programme? It seems that they will be among the first to benefit from it, and the hope among all those involved is that IPM will then be extended to other crops.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 38, December 1997, pages 4-5]