The Kano state government, under the Kano State Agro-Pastoral Development Project (KSADP) in partnership with the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and Lives and Livelihood Project (LLP) has initiated an enlightenment program for farmers against the use of some chemicals as pesticides.
This was revealed Tuesday to newsmen in Kura local government of Kano state by the Community-based Facilitator, DanAsabe DanGambo working with the projects in ten villages in the area.
He explained that initially, the farmers are not aware of the right chemicals to use as pesticides and have no idea how to use them, and are also ignorant of the dangers they pose as a result of misuse.
He further stated that wrong application of the pesticides and breeching the accepted gap between spraying and harvesting could lead to some life threatening diseases including cancer.
“We are here to impact the knowledge we were taught under the ToT (training of trainers) to the farmers on transplanting system and the nursery of all crops especially rice. Rice farming was giving the farmers tough problem before because they were performing the transplanting wrongly.
“We also taught them how to manage the fields before and after spraying of pesticides as well as the interval between spraying and harvesting which is also very important.
“Especially the vegetables because some farmers will spray today and take the vegetables to market tomorrow which is very dangerous.
“Because some of the chemicals used in spraying, when you spray, there should be an interval of 14 days or 20 days before you harvest the crops. But before, our farmers were not aware of the implications of this and it has had impact in some of our local governments where irrigation is taking place, like Kura, Garunmalam and Bunkure, we are having higher rates of liverscirosci, kidney problems and cancer due to the use of such chemicals irregularly.
“They didn’t know how to spray, they didn’t know the rate of calibration and they didn’t know the rate of chemical to buy per hecter of farmland. They didn’t also have the system of knowing the proper amount they will spend per hecter, which is very important.
“It is very important to know the amount to spend per hecter of land when farming as well as the market linkages.
“We enlighten and train them in all these new farming techniques that lead to higher and safer yield, with the support of the government and the partners” he stated.