False steps to food security?

Many policymakers, agricultural scientists and economists believe that continued pesticide use is essential to increase crop yields for food security. A new PAN UK study with African partners shows that pesticide reliance can undermine food security and farming livelihoods. Stephanie Williamson reports.

Women taking home cowpea pods, Ghana.  Photo Stephanie Williamson

Food security and poverty 
Over 815 million people worldwide are estimated as undernourished. The numbers are growing, despite the pledges from heads of state at the 1996 World Food Summit to halve the number of hungry people by 2015(1). The highest proportion (34%) of undernourished people live in Sub-Saharan Africa, the only continent where food production per capita has actually decreased since the 1970s. 
    Africa’s lagging agricultural production is frequently blamed on its failure to adopt more productive farming technologies. Proponents of high-input agriculture argue that if the region’s predominantly smallholder food crop farmers could be supported to modernise their practices, then yields would increase dramatically as happened in Asia and Latin America with the advent of Green Revolution crop varieties and input packages(2).
    Low productivity is just one of many factors responsible for food insecurity. It is generally recognised that global food production is more than sufficient to meet existing demand and that the key problem lies in poverty – the people who cannot afford to buy sufficient food or obtain access to the resources needed to produce their own(3). Opinions differ, however, on the root causes of poverty and the resulting food insecurity and how these can be best tackled. At the June 2002 World Food Summit: five years later, governments declared an International Alliance Against Hunger, and supported the Anti-Hunger Programme drawn up by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO). The programme aims to mobilise political will, technical expertise and financial resources to promote rapid agricultural growth, led by small-scale farmers, and to improve poor people’s access to food(4). NGOs, indigenous people and peasant farmers’ organisations criticised the programme, arguing that international trade policies, the domination of the food chain by corporate interests, unequal land ownership and the displacement of small farmers are the major forces driving rural poverty and hunger (Box 1). 

Agricultural production strategies
African agricultural policies in the last decade have focused on export and high value crops as income generation strategies for smallholders and for economic growth. To increase staple food crop productivity, higher-yielding or disease and pest resistant improved varieties have been introduced and farmers encouraged to use synthetic fertiliser. Structural adjustment programmes and economic liberalisation measures have shifted provision of inputs and services to the private sector. The measures involved cutbacks in government research and extension; the dismantling or privatisation of state-controlled crop commodity and food grain marketing boards; phasing out subsidies on agrochemical inputs; opening up local and national markets; and reducing government control over pricing and distribution of agricultural inputs and produce.
    How far have these policies and programmes benefited resource-poor farmers? How have they affected productivity, the use of agrochemical inputs and profitability? To explore the links between pesticides, food security and liberalisation measures, PAN UK undertook case studies with African partners in four countries in 2000-2001. The research heard from over 400 women and men farmers, documenting their experiences and concerns with crop and pest management and the ability of their farming enterprises to provide food and cash for household needs. Interviews with informed observers provided information and views on pesticide use, food security and welfare. Informants were drawn from agricultural research and extension, health and environmental agencies, agricultural input suppliers, producers’ associations, donors and local and international development agencies. This article describes some of the main concerns related to food security, farm family welfare and the viability of farming livelihoods.

Cowpea farmer describes which varieties need spraying with insecticides, Ghana. Photo: Stephanie Williamson

Improved varieties and pest susceptibility
Improved varieties of maize in Ethiopia and cowpea in Ghana have been energetically promoted for smallholder farmers to increase their productivity, income and food security. These varieties are directly responsible for increased pesticide use by case study farmers, often of non-approved and acutely toxic products. They are far more susceptible to attack by insect pests than local varieties, in the field or in storage. Ghanaian farmers do not apply any insecticide when growing local cowpea varieties but need to spray up to five times per season to avoid pest damage on the improved varieties. Five of the ten products commonly applied are intended for use on cotton only, including endosulfan, which caused dozens of fatalities in Benin in recent years [see PN52]. 
    Ethiopian farmers recounted how the improved maize will not last a month in storage without treatment against weevils. Insecticide treatment has become the norm and farmers’ experience is that without it, the net losses can cancel out the yield benefits. Most granaries now have chronic weevil infestations since the introduction of these varieties. Some farmers use approved products for treating grain. Yet these were not always effective, hence most farmers’ tendency to apply mixtures of non-approved products, frequently malathion with DDT. As in Ghana, they often source pesticides from informal dealers who sell small quantities of unlabelled products. DDT is no longer approved for any agricultural use in Ethiopia.

Benefit of improved varieties?
Women cowpea farmers in Ghana explained that few have been able to adopt the improved varieties because they lack the cash to buy insecticides. With rapidly rising input costs, poorer farmers are forced to cut back on the acreage under cowpea or reduce insecticide applications. This begs the question of why pest-susceptible varieties are being promoted for poverty alleviation and food security when the farmers with least resources are unable to benefit from them. 
    The main disadvantage of local varieties is their longer growing period, which is risky if the rains stop early. However, some cowpea farmers know of early-maturing or high-yielding local varieties. These give good yields without spraying, as long as fields are kept weed-free. One black-eyed local variety is called ‘How many wives?’ It is very high-yielding and the name is related to the labour needed to harvest it. An early-planted red local variety named ‘run and save the children’, sought for its taste, is also considered good because it can be harvested before any other crops are ready, providing energy to work hard during the peak labour period. Women farmers cited another advantage of local varieties as being that they are never sprayed and therefore the leaves can be consumed, providing an important source of vitamins and iron.
    Why, therefore, are farmers urged to adopt improved varieties with the associated expense and health risks from insecticide reliance? Funds and effort could be better spent on tackling farmers’ major problems with declining soil fertility and lack of storage and marketing options. 
Crop protection stakeholders in Ethiopia raised concerns about the overwhelming emphasis of the extension service on seed and fertiliser technology packages to boost yields, without any real consideration of pest management. If introduced varieties are more susceptible to pests or diseases, those promoting them bear the responsibility to explain to farmers the costs, as well as the benefits, and to promote safe and effective methods for control. Ten years after the initial introduction of improved cowpea, Ghana’s Savannah Agricultural Research Institute has started Farmer Field Schools for cowpea Integrated Pest Management, promoting the use of neem seed extract to replace most of the insecticide applications. Farmers learn about seed selection methods and compare agronomic and culinary characteristics of different varieties.

Food safety 
The definition of food security used at the 1996 World Food Summit stipulates access to …’sufficient, safe and nutritious food…’. Food safety is a hot topic for consumers and regulators in rich countries but frequently overlooked in relation to the health of consumers and farm families in developing countries. The case studies revealed high risks of harmful levels of pesticide residues in food crops for domestic consumption and local markets. 
    Ghanaian farmers reported incidents of food poisoning, two requiring hospitalisation, following grain and cowpea treatment with inappropriate pesticides. Farmers are aware of the dangers but may sometimes be forced to consume treated grain early if they run out of food. They say this can cause stomach pain, migraine, diarrhoea and vomiting. One farmer described how he normally treats cowpea for selling later to buy maize ‘you have to wait five or six months before you can sell treated beans to get rid of the poison. But if you have a cash emergency and need to sell early, you might not respect this period. You try first to find other ways to raise the cash because you know the cowpea is still full of ‘medicine’. Ethiopian farmers and health professionals were worried about insecticide residues in maize and vegetables, in the light of increased incidence of gastric and respiratory illness in the district. 
    In Senegal, cotton farmers in the study villages have been protecting their stored maize and groundnut with chlorpyrifos or fenitrothion (both organophosphates classified moderately hazardous by the WHO), supplied for this purpose by the Department of Plant Protection. The head of the local agricultural promotion centre admitted that these compounds were unsuitable for treating grain for consumption due to their high toxicity, but felt obliged to provide farmers with some means of protection when stocks of approved products were unavailable. 
    Traditional methods of grain protection using ash or plant-based preparations have been abandoned by many farmers as pesticide reliance became widespread. One Ghanaian farmer lamented that ‘we don’t know how to treat stored cowpea safely, without using dangerous chemicals that can kill people’. 
    Lack of knowledge about safe and effective storage methods not only risks poisonings but also cuts into the income of farm families, when they have little alternative but to sell their foodgrains at the low prices prevailing immediately after harvest. Prices obtained for cowpea when markets are glutted are 25-42% lower than during the lean period. Case study farmers rely on cowpea as one of their main cash earners but could be losing an estimated US$460-490 per ha, less storage losses and treatment costs, by selling at glut periods. But simple and relatively cheap methods for controlling storage pests do exist, including solarisation using plastic sheeting, diatomaceous earths, traditional methods for repelling or dessicating insects and improved designs for granaries. Programmes to improve productivity and income generation should promote safe storage and help farmer groups to set up more profitable bulk storage and marketing operations, instead of fostering reliance on pesticides, which are unlikely to be used safely or effectively [see PN53].

Income, livelihoods and food provision
One of farmers’ most pressing concerns was their declining revenue from crop sales, due to recent rapid rises in input costs and/or a drop in the price their produce fetches. The impact was most dramatic among Ethiopian farmers, where, ironically, improved varieties and two years of good rainfall have produced a surplus of grain on local markets, leading to price crashes of up to 40%. Farmers who had taken loans to purchase improved seed, fertiliser and pesticides could no longer cover their costs of production. Case study farmers had run up debts of US$35-117, often selling off their precious livestock assets to repay them. They identified pesticide reliance as contributing to the increased vulnerability of their farming livelihood and to decreased food stocks, as they now rely on cash generation for over 50% of their food provision and have to sell more of their food crops to cover rising costs.
    Vegetable cropping is often viewed as a lucrative activity but Senegalese farmers explained that farmers with few resources are becoming much poorer under current conditions of production and marketing, with growing food insecurity one of the most visible indicators. 56% of those interviewed are no longer able to provide three meals a day all year round. 
    Cotton has likewise been promoted as a profitable livelihood for resource-poor farmers in the savannah zones of West Africa but for cotton farmers in Benin this income generation strategy has failed to improve food security. Food availability has declined at household, village and district levels with the expansion of cotton, combined with falling yields of food and cotton crops and decreasing revenue from cotton. Farmers assessed that 90% of households were totally food secure in 1990 but only 3% by 2001, with 11% now in serious difficulties. Cotton farmers in Senegal expressed disillusion with high-input strategies, explaining how pesticides threaten the development of their community as ‘we have found that they only bring us problems, poisonings, suicides, increased production costs and debts, without increasing yields’. 

Challenging assumptions 
Our research suggests that intensification strategies based on external inputs have not generally delivered higher incomes or improved food security for poor farmers, especially women. In the case of pineapple, economic benefits have been obvious but do not necessarily translate into improved welfare, as witnessed by continued malnutrition among children of pineapple farmers in the Benin case study village. In Ghana, the sustainability of the pineapple boom for smallholders is questionable with changing export market requirements and the trend to large-scale operations [see PN 54].
    Many decision makers overestimate the benefits of pesticide use and overlook the economic, health and environmental costs. They tend to presume that absence of external synthetic inputs automatically results in low yields and are often unaware of the potential of alternative production methods to increase productivity. Experiences of farmers in many different cropping systems reveal that more intensive crop production without reliance on pesticides and synthetic fertilisers is perfectly feasible when using practices which regenerate agrobiodiversity, make better use of local natural resources or add new productive elements to farm systems. By using these techniques, 4.4 million small-scale farmers have increased their household food production by an average 1.7 tonnes(5).
    Renewed donor interest in investing in smallholder agriculture for poverty reduction and food security is most welcome. The challenge is to ensure that proposed investments, via World Bank-funded agricultural investment programmes, governments’ poverty reduction strategies, the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and FAO’s Anti-Hunger Campaign, will be spent on practical support for ecologically-based farming methods rather than increased dependence on agrochemical inputs. 

References
1. State of Food Insecurity 2001, FAO http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/003/Y1500E/Y1500E00.HTM
2. Governance and food security in an age of globalisation, 2020Vision Discussion paper no.36, R. Paarlberg, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2002
3. Farming systems and poverty. Improving farmers’ livelihoods in a changing world, J. Dixon, A Gulliver and D Gibbon, FAO and World Bank, Rome and Washington, 2001.
4. Declaration of the World Food Summit: five years later. International Alliance against Hunger http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/MEETING/004/Y6948E.HTM
5. Reducing Food Poverty with Sustainable Agriculture: a summary of new evidence. Final report from the SAFE-World research project, J Pretty and R Hine, Centre for Environment & Society, University of Essex, 2001. http://www2.essex.ac.uk/ces/ResearchProgrammes/CESOccasionalPapers/
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[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 57, September 2002, pages 3-5]