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By Steve Mapfumo
The land reform programme, a masterpiece that has been received with mixed feelings the world over has come and gone. The excitement it brought has stayed in some families but in others it is gone and whether it will come back depends on a variety of factors.
Turning a farming enterprise into a thriving business that is capable of sending children to good schools and affording the farming family a holiday at least once a year is not a joke. Be that as it may, it is not impossible.

Experience has proved that if any businessman has to run a profitable business, the owner has to be present when things are happening on daily basis. It is however interesting to note that a drive around the farms in practically all the provinces in Zimbabwe paints a different picture on the commitment of the owners of farms.

A high percentage of the farms are run by farm workers while the owners are elsewhere. Research has shown that it actually costs the farmer a lot more not to stay on the farm than to stay there.

Farming on its own is a full time business and taking it part time is a disaster in the making.

A good number of cell phone farmers will not agree with me but the truth is they are losing a lot of money in their absence.

Many have failed to honour their loan obligation leading to them being blacklisted by financial institutions. Losses are experienced in the following areas:

Pilferage or theft of inputs
Abuse of machinery
Abuse of fertilisers and chemicals
Misuse of chemicals.

The focus of this article is going to be on the use, misuse and abuse of agro-chemicals. Many farmers believe that once they buy the correct herbicides, insecticides, nematicides, fungicides and bactericides (pesticides), the job is done and they will not lose.

Others will argue that they have tight security systems and nothing will be stolen from the farm but have they ever quantified the down time spend by their workers when they fall sick.

There is money involved in the treatment of the workers and in the unfortunate situation that a worker dies, a lot more money is lost in the burial process. There might be more costs incurred in caring for the family of the diseased.

Since farmers are away most of the time, a good amount of chemicals are not handled well in the following ways,

a; wrong mixing methods used,
b; wrong implements used during application,
c; no protective clothing used, d; wrong application rates,
e; poor disposal of chemicals or empty containers that contained chemicals. Workers are then exposed to harmful chemicals this way and these chemicals will penetrate their bodies through inhalation, swallowing and some chemicals can penetrate through eyes and the skin.

These chemicals used on the farms may persist in the environment causing damage that will persist for long periods of time.

The presence in the environment, of highly hazardous class of chemicals known as Persistent Organic Pollutants, (POPs), has resulted in a high risk of exposure for farm workers. These are highly undesirable as they persist in the environment for long periods of time before breaking down into less harmful substances.

They are highly toxic, have the ability to bio-accumulate in fatty tissues of human beings and other living organisms and can travel long distances (up to thousands of kilometres) from where they were originally produced.

Their adverse effects on human health include disrupting the reproductive, immune and nervous systems. They also cause cancer.

A wide range of agrochemicals are used but many farming communities in the country are not adequately informed about the hazards associated with the chemicals.

As a result, farmers let their workers use agrochemicals without full understanding of their impact on their health and the environment.
Workers come in contact with agrochemicals in the field during chemical application, weeding and harvesting of crops.

Storing agrochemicals may lead into acute and/or chronic exposures, with adverse health consequences.

Although the inhalation, dermal(through the skin) and oral (through the mouth) routes of exposure are the most common, agrochemical residues in food and water may add to indirect exposures common in the general population.

Illnesses suffered by one or more members of a household can result from exposure to agrochemicals and may affect the overall performance and productivity of the workers on the farm.

The level of health costs has been estimated in some farming communities and has been shown to be quite high, an aspect many farmers seem to be ignorant about.

There is therefore the need to develop an appropriate tool for containing the real cost of agrochemicals usage in Zimbabwe to fill the knowledge and information gap so as to provide better means to develop appropriate agrochemical handling and usage on our farms.

Some research done in Zimbabwe showed that the use of agrochemicals was very high, with over 44 different agrochemicals and different formulations, probably because farmers assume that the only and quickest solution to pest problems is to spray more frequently and using different types of chemicals.

It was also observed that farmers used more agrochemicals because they based their applications on calendar spray agrochemicals programme without necessarily giving much priority to health and environmental considerations.

Points to seriously think about
It has been observed that:

Reproductive toxicity of agro-chemicals is fast assuming a lot of importance and it has been seen to manifest in the following ways

Changes in sexual behaviour
Infertility or sub-fertility
Adverse pregnancy outcomes and sometimes
A combination of these herbicides and insecticides may cause female hormone – like effects in the male body and may be associated with reduced sperm production and testicular cancer.

It is up to each and every farmer who is letting things run in auto-pilot on his/her farm to start thinking seriously about the hazards they are exposing their workers to and ask yourself whether you are doing the right thing or not.

• Steve Mapfumo is the Head of Operations at the Zanu PF Youth League and Lasch Enterprises P/L Joint Venture. The Joint Venture Management can be contacted on 04-668773 or [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . Website: www.laschjv.co.zw <http://www.laschjv.co.zw>