A farmer in Nepal displays the pesticide sprayer she uses for her farm.
In the developing world, the inappropriate use of toxic chemical pesticides frequently leads to human, animal, and environmental health issues.
When travel restrictions imposed by the rise of COVID-19 put a pin in the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management’s plan to spend the month of March delivering pesticide safety training in Nepal to address the problem, the team moved online.
The IPM Innovation Lab, in collaboration with its latest project, Feed the Future Nepal Integrated Pest Management, has already hosted at least 200 participants in the first of its virtual training sessions. The team aims to contribute to policy change that will enforce the safe sale and careful use of chemical pesticides.
“As a global land-grant university, Virginia Tech aims to improve the lives and livelihoods of people around the world,” said Muni Muniappan, director of the IPM Innovation Lab.
The online training sessions are presented by Tim McCoy, a Virginia Cooperative Extension associate for Virginia Tech’s Pesticide Programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. They cover such topics as proper pesticide disposal methods, pest resistance to chemicals, pesticide labeling and reducing skin exposure. One of the main goals of integrated pest management is introducing farmers to a variety of agricultural options for mitigating pests rather than relying solely on pesticides.
In Nepal, farmers face food insecurity in part due to the pervasiveness of pests and diseases attacking crops. However, the use of expired, highly toxic pesticides leads to even further problems, such as contaminated drinking water and human respiratory and reproductive issues. Without regular access to chemically resistant gloves, masks and goggles, farmer exposure is even further exacerbated. The high prevalence of illiteracy also remains a barrier to farmers following basic handling guidelines that help reduce heavy chemical residues left on food.
The training sessions provide knowledge on safer ways farmers can protect themselves from overexposure to harsh chemicals — say, by choosing a safe, designated space in which to mix pesticides, properly disposing of chemical containers, wearing clothing that can provide greater skin protection and when and how much to spray.
The training sessions also focus on ways to prevent harmful environmental impacts from the excessive use of chemicals with such recommendations as pesticide rotation to evade pest resistance or the application of bio-pesticides, which helps reduce the loss of beneficial insects that naturally keep harmful pest populations low.
While the majority of the training participants were from Nepal, IPM Innovation Lab collaborators from Bangladesh and Cambodia were also invited in the hopes that knowledge of pesticide safety could be integrated more widely across South Asia.
