Abstract
Vegetables are grown world-wide in almost 200 countries, but they are regularly subject to pest pressure. To cope with the multiple pests, farmers resort to pesticides whose use in developing countries carries health and environmental risks. This study aimed to investigate the practices of vegetable farmers from Ouagadougou when using pesticides, and to examine the potential for contamination of ground and surface water. Based on the use of questionnaires and field observations, this study investigated farmers’ practices on vegetable pest management using pesticides. The physicochemical properties of the active ingredients of pesticide were analysed, and Goss and GUS algorithms were applied to estimate the risk of surface and ground water contamination, respectively. The majority of producers were male (58%), illiterate (80%) and use pesticide in their vegetable crops (97.72%). The products used by the farmers in the study areas were insecticides (28), herbicides (5), fungicides (1), and nematicide (1), altough more than 50% of these pesticides were registered for the treatment of cotton crops but not for vegetables. Depending on the crop, 88% of the farmers applied pesticides up to 5 times or more per cropping season. Among active ingredients from pesticides used by farmers, eight are highly solubles, nine are readily degradables, six are moderately mobiles, and five are imobiles. Five have high potential to contaminate surface water while one has high potential to contaminate ground water. These results can be used for the development of tool to predict water contamination by pesticides in pest management by vegetable farmers. This could contribute to the reinforcement of pesticides policy for advance their health, environmental and economic consequences.
Highlights
Vegetables are grown world-wide in almost 200 countries
Based on the approach used by Nguyen et al [16], the sites were selected for the survey based on the importance and scale of vegetable production, agro-ecology, types of crops produced, and accessibility
These results suggest that no more than 10% of vegetable farmers in Ouagadougou are able to read the label instructions for proper use of pesticides
Summary
Vegetables are grown world-wide in almost 200 countries. They are vital to the general good health of human beings, providing essential vitamins and minerals, dietary fiber and phytochemicals, and reducing risk from dangerous diseases and other medical conditions [1]. The economic importance of vegetables pushes the populations of cities and suburbs of developing countries to turn to urban and peri-urban agriculture, especially vegetable production which contributes to the reduction of unemployment, fight against poverty and food insecurity in households with limited. Crop losses due to damage caused by pests, diseases, nematodes and weeds are a major agricultural problem for producers [2]. In 2010, losses attributed to pathogens, insects, virus, and weeds in six major crops (rice, wheat, maize, potatoes, soybean, and cotton seeds) amounted to US$16.16 billion in Africa [4]
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