The Hindu Business Line : AP to pilot campaign for safe, judicious use of chemical pesticides

Hyderabad, Sept. 9 With a view to promoting wider and judicial use of chemical pesticides in agriculture, the Agrochemicals Policy Group (APG) has teamed with Confederation of NGOs in Rural India (CNRI) to launch the campaign ‘Gyandeep’.

The campaign, though taken up in six States, would be piloted in Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh where the NGOs would interact with the farmers and tell them about the safe and judicious use of chemical pesticides.

Announcing the association with CNRI at a press conference here on Tuesday, Mr S. Kumarasamy, Chairman, APG, said 44 NGOs (non-governmental organisations) selected 20 villages each for the project, covering a total of 30,000 farmers.

APG represented about 200 crop protection companies in India. The size of the industry is put at Rs 4,000 crore, with multi-national companies contributing three-fourths of it.

Discounting the apprehensions raised by some NGOs, Mr Kumarasamy said it was not excessive use of chemicals that was causing the problems. “In fact, the use of chemicals in the prescribed form is very low in India when compared to China. As a result, we are recording very low productivity levels when compared to China,” he said.

Quoting surveys, Mr Kumarasamy said India was losing Rs 1.40 lakh crore worth agriculture produce because of inadequate use of chemical pesticides.

While the agricultural sector suffered from lower use of chemical pesticides, spurious products further aggravated the problem. “It is estimated that the fake pesticide industry is at Rs 1,000 crore,” he pointed out.

More Stories on : Pesticides | Andhra Pradesh

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