LEISA's Farm

Indian white gold goes organic

Small farmers and pesticide use in Ecuador

Posted by Mundie

In 2004, a BBC radio programme: Dying to Make a Living told about how potato farmers in Carchi, Ecuador were suffering from serious health problems associated with pesticide use. Many of the pesticides available in Carchi are rated as “highly toxic”. While use of these pesticides is actively promoted in Ecuador and other developing countries, they are greatly restricted in places like Europe and the United States.

Stephen Sherwood defended his PhD research last week at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, based on his ten years’ working with farmers in Carchi. In his thesis, he details his search to understand why farmers continue to use highly toxic pesticides even though they are harmful.

Carchi is considered to be one of the most productive farming regions in the Andes. Farmers there produce 40% of Ecuador’s potatoes in smallholdings that have become more and more intensified since the 1960s. Intensification methods such as use of pesticides have led to soil and biodiversity deteriorating, and productivity is now on the decline.

Sherwood found a conundrum: farmers all believed that they need pesticides in order to have good yields in their potato crops. However, they also saw that pest problems were increasing. At the same time, the majority of the rural people in the area were suffering from neurological damage and many were dying, because of pesticide poisoning - with the most toxic pesticides being responsible for 90 % of the worst health problems.

At first, Sherwood and his colleagues assumed that they needed to provide farmers and policy-makers with better information about the harmful effects of pesticides. He documents in detail their long journey to train farmers on alternatives to toxic pesticide use through Farmer Field Schools, as well as through meetings with industry and government agencies, public education campaigns, radio shows and reports.

 But all their efforts failed to get the government to stop promoting the use of (highly toxic) pesticides - and farmers kept going back to these cheap and easily available products as well, even though they knew about viable alternatives.

So, Sherwood found, information is not enough. Too many people benefit from pesticide sales, and therefore do not want to recognise or take responsibility for the problems. In fact, farmers were blamed for their improper use of pesticides. Government and pesticide companies preferred campaigns to promote the safe use of pesticides. Sherwood has found that such "SUP programmes" are ineffective – not only do they reach too few farmers, but they do not focus on the fundamental cause of the problem (high toxicity), focusing rather on managing the effects (ie, to decrease their exposure).

One of his study's conclusions is that farmers will only stop using highly toxic pesticides if the government imposes restrictions on their use - but the government will only do this if it is forced to, by international regulations and control measures.

Also see LEISA article from 2007: It's time to ban highly hazardous pesticides

Download Stephen Sherwood’s thesis: Learning from Carchi: Agricultural Modernisation and the Production of Decline

Making unsafe water safe (2) : SODIS

Remember this log we had here a few weeks ago on making unsafe water safe by Solvatten? The Solvatten is a patented finding which makes polluted water clean in a 10 liters container, using solar energy.  After having read about the Solvatten, a colleague at ILEIA's mentioned his using the same solar energy method to purify water when he and his family lived in a remote tropical area, though not with a patented container but with simple Tupperware boxes. Could it be that he did not consider his method safe enough, though? for he stubbornly refused to write a comment on the blogpost ...

But sure, there is a more simple method indeed, and of course it's on the internet: the SODIS - Solar Water Disinfection. (Mind you: no Tupperware, as it's not transparent!)

This is the SODIS method (click for full info):

Contaminated water is filled into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours.

Sunlight is treating the contaminated water through two synergetic mechanisms: Radiation in the spectrum of UV-A (wavelength 320-400nm) and increased water temperature. If the water temperatures raises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster.

SODIS is ideal to treat small quantities of water.

The SODIS website offers further information (also flyers), in English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.

LEISA's Farm learned about SODIS via this thought-provoking article on Agit8.
("But how did you find that article on Agit8?" Well.... via Twitter. Yes - LEISA's Farm has gone tweeting & reading others' tweets, and finds them surprisingly informative.)

Fashionable and unfashionable foods

A recent article in the Daily Nation offers an ironic take on the eating habits of the Kenyans. It says food based on maize like ugali enjoys a cult status despite its low nutrients level, while nutritionally richer foods like millet and cassava are not considered a staple, because they are not "fashionable".

Cult status? Fashionable? Ugali - a starchy porridge made of maize - is a common staple food in many African countries, and therefore it sounds strange to talk about fashionability in relation to ugali. Ugali may have a lower nutritional level than other staple foods, but the nutritional value of your ugali meal also depends on what you eat with your ugali: the vegetables and/or meat and sauce available to scoop up with it. When people go undernourished while having their stomachs full of ugali (a combination of obesity and hidden hunger) - whether caused by ignorance about nutritional values, disinterest or just non-availability of healthy side dishes or alternatives -  to LEISA's Farm ironizing their food habits does not seem the right way to remedy the problem. Or does it?

Some additional reads on ugali:

- A discussion on ugali on the Mashada Forum
- How The Naked Scientists make ugali
- Without affordable ugali, should we eat cake? by Mike Owuor in The Standard, 25/11/2008

and last but not least
-An article in the Living Soils issue of LEISA Magazine describing how farmers learn to understand nutrient resources.

Photo credit: Egui (Bao) on Flickr

Make unsafe water drinkable by solar energy

Yesterday's posting brought in a very interesting comment (thank you, Karen!).

 

Swedish Petra Wadström invented the Solvatten, a portable 10-liter container using solar energy to make polluted water clean. The method is patented. This is how the Solvatten (a Swedish word meaning "sun water") works: in the two container halves water is heated by the sun to 55 degrees C. The synergetic effects of both heat and UV radiation purifies contaminated water at 55 degrees in 3-4 hours of solar exposure. The effect is  "Safe Water" according to WHO`S Guidelines for Safe Water (<1 E-coli/100ml water).

Most people know that you have to heat unsafe water before drinking it. Large populations in the world lack safe water for drinking and personal hygiene and have to boil it before use. Using solar energy for purifying water in stead of firewood etc. would be a saving for the household and for the environment. Since fewer trees are needed for heating there will be less deforestation, less erosion of the soil and less C02 emissions. 

The Solvatten method is a water treatment primarily suited for children and families. Easy to understand instructions are printed on the container.

In 2009 the first units of Solvatten will reach Nepal for a user study. A program will be run in a number of families, schools and health centers in Nepal. The program is being implemented in collaboration with UN-Habitat and ENPHO. More info on www.solvatten.se.

(Find a follow-up on this post here)

Photos from Solvatten's press kit.

The Tippy Tap, a hand washing device with running water

The Tippy Tap is a simple device for hand washing with running water. A container of 5 liter with a small hole near the cap is filled with water and tipped with a stick and rope tied trough a hole in the cap. As only the soap is touched with the hands, the device is very hygienic. A gravel bed is used to soak away the water and prevent mosquitos.
Movie made by Mark Tiele Westra, Werkgroep OntwikkelingsTechnieken (WOT), Universiteit Twente, the Netherlands. More info on www.akvo.org, the open source for water and sanitation.

European Parliament votes for ban on 20+ pesticides

After years of debate and lobbying by different parties, yesterday the European Parliament voted for a ban on at least 22 pesticides which cause cancer or damage to hormones. Some campaigners on the green side say the new laws do not go far enough. And there will still be arguments over exactly which specific products will be banned.
Read different points of view in this article by Dominic Hughes on BBC News.