Hilary Chiew, The Star 10 Mar 09;
Banned agro-chemicals continue to find their way into rice fields.
IMAGES of golden brown rice stalks swaying in the gentle breeze or a sprawling green vista come to mind when one thinks of the padi fields of Kedah. Apart from the knowledge that at 96,558ha the Muda Agriculture Development Agency (Mada) is the largest rice production centre in the country, many may not have a clue as to what goes into the production of the staple grain.
Set up in the late 1960s, Mada was envisioned to be the proverbial rice bowl as part of the socio-economic development plan of Malaysia. Today, it accounts for close to 50% of the country’s rice production of 2.3 million tonnes.
In June, Mada will turn 39. Apparently things are not all going well in the rice fields and among the 48,500 farmers who toil to put the pearly white grains on our plates. Plagued by floods and droughts in recent years which the farmers attribute to climate change as well as diminishing soil fertility and pesticide poisoning, rice farming has never been more challenging.
Other problems notwithstanding, it now appears that agro-chemicals misuse, a habit inevitably inculcated by the government subsidy scheme, is proving to be a hard habit to kick.
Under the Pesticides Act 1974, 28 insecticides, herbicides and fungicides have been banned. However, the notorious endosulfan, a highly acute toxin and a suspected endocrine disruptor, which was banned in November 2005 with a one year phase-out period to clear existing stocks is still widely applied in rice farms.
Marketed under the trade name of Thiodan by Bayer, endosulfan is heavily relied on by farmers in the Mada scheme to solve all sorts of pest attacks.
Endosulfan is banned in more than 50 countries. Due to its high toxicity and high potential for bioaccumulation and environmental contamination, a global ban on the use and manufacture of endosulfan is being considered under the Stockholm Convention. The international agreement to phase out harmful chemicals referred to as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) decided at its meeting last October to list endosulfan as a POP by its next meeting at the end of the year.
Chemicals-dependent
However, rice farmers in the Mada scheme openly admit that the prohibited substance is available and constantly sprayed to rid the farms of pests, especially the golden apple snail (siput gondang emas).
Generally referred to as racun Cina (Chinese poison) as the packaging carries only descriptions in Chinese words, farmers say they have no choice but to rely on the banned pesticide “for its effectiveness”.
Ismail Shafie, 36, of Permatang Kenanga pays RM6 for a packet and generally uses two packets for one relong (about 0.4ha) to kill off the snails. “It’s the most effective solution but we are worried about the side-effects.”
From time to time, there have been newspaper reports of farmers complaining of skin rashes and sprayers falling sick after applying the chemicals in the field.
Veteran farmer Tajudin Yaakob, 55, echoes Ismail’s sentiments. He says farmers have been buying agro-chemicals such as endosulfan and methomyl from the black market, adding that the contraband came from Thailand.
He claims that endosulfan is readily supplied by at least five shops in his area, Kampung Air Hitam in Jerlun. “But they’ll only sell to farmers whom they trust,” he adds.
As the Agriculture Department has beefed up enforcement, sellers and buyers have devised ingenious ways to evade detection. For example, farmers would place orders in the shop but pick up the contraband in a rubbish bin at another location.
Tajudin says his problem with pests began after he switched from the traditional transplanting practice to direct seeding 15 years ago. Before Mada’s intervention, farmers sow rice seeds in a nursery and transplant the saplings to the growing plot later.
“Twenty years ago, I used buffaloes to plough my farm and I never used pesticides. But now, my farm cannot do without these chemicals,” he adds.
His neighbour Azmi Abdul Jalil, 60, shares his frustrations. “The number of pesticides used have increased tremendously. For one relong we spend RM120 for two rounds of herbicide spraying and RM45 for three times of pesticide spraying and that excludes labour costs,” he explains.
More checks
Agriculture Department deputy director-general (operation) Sulaiman Md Zain admits that use of contraband agro-chemicals is a growing problem but the authorities are doing all they can to curb smuggling and nab local culprits who offer the prohibited chemicals to farmers.
He says enforcement together with Customs officers had some success but is frustrated by pacts between farmers and suppliers. “Suppliers even go direct to the farms and this is rampant in the Mada area. However, we are educating the farmers through our extension programme on the danger of these banned chemicals.”
In Kedah and Perlis, out of 290 premises that were licensed to sell agro-chemicals, 59 operators had their permits revoked for contravening the Pesticides Act in 2006.
Since 2007, Sulaiman says roadblocks at entry points bordering Thailand have been mounted following reports of smuggling, and raids have been extended to farms.
“The contraband is usually concealed in vegetable trucks coming from Thailand.” He adds that due to limited resources, there is no 100% inspection and enforcement relies on tip-offs and intelligence gathering.
In the last two years, only two of the 21 roadblocks uncovered contraband. At the farms, 442 raids were conducted, with 20 confiscations and 12 convictions. Between 1998 and 2008, 6,271 checks conducted nationwide resulted in 555 confiscations, 365 prosecutions and half a million ringgit in fines. No offenders were jailed.
Damaging subsidies
Critics of agro-chemicals say the Government fails to see the co-relation between its agro-chemical subsidies and chemical dependence in the country’s rice fields.
Third World Network sustainable agriculture researcher Lim Li Ching says the problem afflicting Mada can be traced to the adoption of the Green Revolution by Malaysia. The Green Revolution is an international movement which started in the 1960s on agriculture expansion to feed growing populations.
“Mada spearheaded the two-season farming practice with government subsidies in high yield varieties (HYV) and agro-chemical inputs. As with the Green Revolution, mono-cropping of HYV is accompanied by a rapid rise in pesticide application as these varieties were more susceptible to pest outbreaks,” she explains.
By the 70s, she adds, Green Revolution-style farming has replaced the traditional farming practices of many developing countries. By the 90s, almost 75% of Asian rice areas were sown with these new varieties.
The Mada area is planted with several types of HYVs developed by the Malaysian Agriculture Research and Development Institute (Mardi).
Consumers Association of Penang education officer N.V. Subbarow urges the Government to review its subsidy policies and take steps to reform the rice growing system.
Sulaiman says the department is encouraging sustainable agricultural practices that include the reduction in the use of chemicals and organic farming methods but acknowledges that so far the programme only reaches out to vegetable and fruit farmers.
Snail invasion
The Star 10 Mar 09;
IT WAS first detected at Wan Mat Saman’s irrigation canal in Pangkalan Kundur, Kedah, in 1992. From there, it gradually spread to the nearby Mada (Muda Agriculture Development Agency) rice fields.
Today, it is said to infest about 2,000ha of the 96,558ha-granary. The golden apple snails, locally known as siput gondang emas, is an invasive alien species that is devastating rice fields in the north and there is no clear solution to it yet. Two species were found to have infested the Mada farms – Pomacea canaliculata and Pomacea insularum.
It is believed that the snail that is native to Latin America was brought into the country by the food trade which was hoping to raise the gastropod but was unsuccessful. At some point, it was discharged into the environment. The snail is also creating havoc in other Asian rice planting regions.
According to the Global Invasive Species Programme, the snail can spread rapidly from agricultural areas into wetlands and other natural freshwater systems and can threaten native aquatic vegetation and aquatic fauna, including native snails.
Climatic modelling has shown that it has the potential to spread to other uninfested areas, such as the huge rice growing areas of India. It has already been introduced to the United States and threatens the major rice crops of Texas and California. After years of looking into the problem, the Programme concludes that eradication of established populations is probably not possible. It recommends that in rice and taro fields, regular hand picking is a reliable method to control apple snail populations without harming the environment.
Farmers in Mada are relying heavily on the banned endosulfan to rid the ferocious snails that can devour an entire plot overnight. The Agriculture Department is experimenting with mechanical, biological and chemical control measures.
Department deputy director-general (operation) Sulaiman Md Zain says inundation of the irrigation canal with sea water by opening the coastal watergate during high tides has been carried out to kill the snails but the method needs careful execution to prevent sea water from entering rice fields.
Ducks have also been roped in to help eradicate the snails. So far, three farmers are in the pilot scheme. However, part-time farmer Che Halim Idris of Kampung Air Hitam in Jerlun says this method will fail as long as farmers continue to spray the fields with agro-chemicals as the ducks will succumb to chemical poisoning.
“My mother used to raise about 50 ducks at any one time but they started dying,” recalls the English teacher. “It seems like the more we use modern technologies, the more problems we get,” he says.
Seeking safer options
The Star 10 Mar 09;
SACKS of organic fertiliser sit idly underneath some stilt houses in Jerlun, Kedah. The same type of fertiliser supplied to rice farmers in the Mada (Muda Agriculture Development Agency) scheme can also be seen in the storerooms of some farmers’ houses.
The fertilisers came as part of the additional subsidies under the Food Supply Assurance Policy launched last year in response to the global food crisis, to boost rice production and were distributed to eligible farmers for two seasons beginning last April.
However, farmers are rejecting the organic fertiliser as they found it to be ineffective. They claim that it made the soil soggy and gave them skin rashes. The additional subsidies also include a chemical package for a host of pest problems – rats, snails and stem-borers – and a subsidy for tractor services.
Tajudin Yaakob of Kampung Air Hitam in Jerlun questions the lack of consultation by the authorities on the needs of farmers. “The package is so rigid. We were told to choose from a selected number of pesticides and we had to take the substandard organic fertiliser. Why can’t they let us choose the type of pesticides that we know can work rather than give us useless stuff?”
The farmers reckon a coupon system where they can purchase the farm inputs that they want at the regional farmers’ organisation stores would be more effective.
Agriculture Department deputy director-general Sulaiman Md Zain says the supplier of the “sub-standard” fertiliser is being investigated for not meeting the specification of the contract.
In Kuala Kedah, farmer Md Saad Ali who finds the additional subsidies a waste of taxpayers’ money, no longer use pesticides on his farms but rely on organic concoctions to keep pests and weeds at bay.
“The authorities are ignoring our efforts and continue to waste money on all these agro-chemicals. We can’t refuse the fertilisers and pesticides as these come in a package with the RM28.35 per ha tractor subsidy. We either accept the package or we get nothing,” he claims.
Md Saad is producing his own organic fertilisers based on methods learnt from organic farming workshops organised by the Consumers Association of Penang. For the last four years, the 62-year-old farmer has experimented with organic methods and now has reached out to 1,000 farmers from Kuala Kedah up to Perlis. He says within the Kota Star district, 10 farmers with a combined 100 relong (one relong is about 0.4ha) of farm land are adopting organic ways.
Md Saad now spends about RM8 per relong to solve pest problems compared to RM1,900 for his 12 relong of land within a season when he was dependent on agro-chemicals.
Besides the decreasing costs of external inputs, he claims that the yield is compatible with the conventional method and is picking up after four years. He acknowledges that there are farmers who are sceptical and reluctant to try new ways because they are reliant on the agro-chemical subsidies.
Md Saad says he would never return to applying chemicals as his health has suffered and he believes some of his friends had died at the relatively young age of 50 due to long-term chemical poisoning.
“There’s no future for agriculture in this country if we continue on this agro-chemical path. If we have alternatives, we should not continue with the toxic way,” he concludes.
