Study Finds 69% of Nigerian Farmers Affected by Pesticide Poisoning

News in Brief:

— A new study found that 69% of Nigerian farmers and farm workers experience unintentional acute pesticide poisoning, exceeding regional and global averages.

— Researchers are calling for urgent action to phase out highly hazardous pesticides and provide farmers with safer alternatives.

A new study on pesticide poisoning has raised alarms about the high exposure of Nigerian farmers to pesticide poisoning, finding that about 69% of farmers and farm workers in the country are exposed to and affected by Unintentional Acute Pesticide Poisoning (UAPP) annually. 

The study, commissioned by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and published in Frontiers in Public Health, found that Nigeria’s exposure rate was the second highest among six West African countries assessed, above the regional and global averages of 48.5% and 46%, respectively.

This finding raises alarm about the increased exposure of Nigeria’s farming population, dominated mostly by smallholder farmers, to chemical hazards.

According to the report, between 402 million and 433 million farmers and farm workers suffer from UAPP globally every year. With an estimated global farming population of 934 million, this indicates that about 46% of farmers worldwide are affected.

In West Africa, the study estimated that an average of 48.9 per cent of farmers and farm workers in the six West African countries assessed experienced UAPP annually, with Burkina Faso leading Nigeria with the highest score of 83.8%. The Gambia recorded 51.5%, Ghana 39.0%, Senegal 30.5%, while Côte d’Ivoire recorded 20.0%.

The study also estimated that pesticide poisoning causes about 11,000 deaths every year, with India accounting for nearly 60% of the fatalities.

Findings Understate Nigerian Reality

The Lead Coordinator for the Alliance for Action on Pesticides in Nigeria (AAPN), Donald Ikenna Ofoegbu, while commenting on the study, noted that the findings of the study still understate the reality of Nigerian farmers

“This finding is not contested. In fact, from what we see, this figure is largely below the reality in Nigeria,” he claimed. "Our findings speak even louder than the reported figure of 69%. In a survey we conducted specifically among smallholder women farmers, we found that 94.2% of these women use synthetic chemicals."

Ofoegbu further linked this issue to the increasing number of cancer cases in Nigeria, where about 107,000 cases are reportedly recorded annually. He pointed to carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting elements in some of the pesticide brands the AAPN surveyed in 2023.

Call for Urgent Action

The authors urged urgent action against UAPP and other pesticide-related harm, calling for the implementation of the United Nations recommendation to phase out highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) immediately.

Head of international programmes Dr Sheila Willis declared that farmers need greater support to access safer alternatives.

“Now that the scale of suffering has been revealed, farmers must be supported to access safer alternatives to protect their health and that of their families,” Willis said.

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), in its effort to curb UAPP and other pesticide-related harm, regularly updates its list of banned pesticides in the country, followed by implementation raids.

However, this is still not enough to adequately protect against the smuggling of these prohibited chemicals and their use by farmers.