The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has published a report with a title of “Pesticides Use, Pesticides Trade and Pesticides Indicators; Global, Regional and Country trends, 1990–2020”. This report is providing some very important insight about the global agricultural practices. The information is to some extent very surprising and frightful.
The following graph represents the pesticides Kilogram /Hectare used in different countries in agricultural activities.
From the above graph, it is very clear that a large part of the world is using huge amounts of the pesticide to increase agricultural production. In some countries the average use of pesticide is as high as 10-25 kg/ha which clearly means that agriculture in these countries is driven by pesticides.
India is using pesticides in agricultural activities in the average range of 0-1 kg/ha. This average is amongst the lowest in the world. If we look at Asia as a whole, China is the only big country in Asia which is using more pesticides than other Asian countries. At present China is using pesticide in the average range of 1-2.5 kg/ha. Same is true with Africa. South Africa is the only big country in Africa which is using pesticides in the average range of 1-2.5 kg/ha while most of the large countries in Africa are using the pesticide in the average range of 0-1 kg/pa.
Australia has an average range of 1-2.5 kg/ha. However, the whole of South America has a high level average range of pesticides in the range of 10-25 kg/ha. Even the USA is using pesticides in the average range of 5-10 kg/ha which has the second largest cropland area in the world.
From the above data, it is clear that India is among those countries which produce the least pesticide contaminated food in the world. But still it uses pesticides in the range of 0-1 kg/ha and it is in a relatively better position but India needs to work on this as it is not enough to think that we contaminate our food the least. Our pesticide use is gradually rising and we should start taking steps to prevent increased contamination in the future. India has the largest cropland area in the world but there is another side to the story and that is that the size of average farmland in India is very small and the average farmers are very poor. It is possible that a lot of farmers cannot afford lots of pesticides and this can be a reason for lower average pesticide use in India. There are some states like Punjab and Haryana which use huge amounts of pesticides and fertilizers in agricultural activities. So even if the average is on the lower side, we need to work harder to shift to organic farming. Considering the prevailing situation, India can easily shift to more natural and sustainable alternatives.
The problem is the use of huge amounts of pesticides and fertilizers in India is not evenly spread but it is getting worse day by day irrespective from hill areas to plains. Everywhere, there is heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers to get the maximum yield and it's causing damage to the ground water. Even in the villages, one cannot drink tap water. Diseases like Cancer are on the rise.
So we are in a huge mess and risking our future.
Rajeev K Upadhyay
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