The New Nation - Internet Edition

A NEWSPAPER report published recently has been startling and should cause indignation among all to be concerned about it. It stated that police had seized huge quantities of date-barred insecticides with the owner of the company distributing the stuff admitting during police interrogation that he has been selling the date-expired products among the farmers for a long time. Insecticides are generally disapproved in many countries considering their health hazarding properties. The same are still sold in Bangladesh but reservations exist about their application and lately the official policy seems to be in favour of naturally protective ways of farming without insecticides. In this situation, if insecticides long past the safety period of their use, are extensively used, then one shudders to think of the human health risks from crops grown with such insecticides and also the toxicity to be caused to soil where the same are applied.

Not only insecticides, the country appears to have also become a carefree ground for marketing spurious and sub-standard fertilisers. Some months ago a big consignment of such fertilisers of Chinese origin were seized by the law enforcers. In that case also, confession came from the owners of the seized fertilisers that they have been indulging in such trading for a long time. Frequently, one comes across news of the farmers getting duped and buying sub-standard fertilisers which can have degrading effects on the soil. The sale activities of pesticides are also shot through with similar offences. Farmers in Bangladesh have been the targets of such abuses and dangerous practices for a long time. They are forced to buy poor quality, soil degrading and environmentally risky products at high prices. Not only targeted productivity can be a casualty of applying such sub-standard inputs, these inputs are also gradually causing otherwise fertile lands to lose their fertility while dangerous toxins are entering the human bodies due to consumption of crops produced with such dangerous agro-inputs.

Farming is still the mainstay of sorts for the national economy notwithstanding its diversification. Productivity going down in the farming sector and losing one of its traditionally valued biggest assets --the fertility of its cultivable lands-- must be regarded as a very great loss that calls for taking of immediate countrywide preventive steps against such risks through very stern law enforcement measures. For achieving the well-being of the greatest number of people in the country, policies must be framed and plans effectively implemented for the farmers to get the agro-inputs they need in adequate quantities at affordable prices. No less important would be making available such inputs which can be accepted without question as being not only of good quality but also of having no adverse environmental effects.