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Why your fruits and vegetables may be poisonous

Quality of food should not be compromised, but how sure are you that the vegetables and fruits you buy from the local market are wholesome? Shakespeare Djokoto an agronomist with over two decades of experience reveals the agronomic practices by most farmers which are rendering food items unwholesome. He speaks to Betty Kankam - Boadu

 

I am on a weight loss journey and I have made a conscious effort to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. I have stocked my fridge with all kinds of fruits and vegetables I bought from the local market.

The million dollar question is how safe are these fruits and vegetables we buy from the market? What is proof that they are free from pesticide poisoning which accounts for millions of deaths around the world?

An estimate by the WHO on pesticide poisoning shows that “there may be 1 million serious unintentional poisonings each year” It is also estimated that 25 million agricultural workers in the developing world suffer “an episode of poisoning each year.” The WHO says governments have not in many cases committed fully to monitoring levels of pesticides.

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When you buy tomatoes for instance  from the market and they go bad within two days because you did not refrigerate them, Shakespeare Djokoto an Agronomist with over 27 years of experience working with vegetable farmers says there is something terribly wrong.

“What most of the farmers are doing is to apply more nitrogen to get the sizes and deliver to the market. Nitrogen brings in a lot of water and when it happens that way it will crumble in a matter of days. What they should apply are the cell wall building chemical like Calcium Nitro-potassium and the rest which they don’t apply because they are more expensive.”

Most vegetables he says should be able to stay on the kitchen shelf for a week or two without going bad.

Djokoto during his many years working at the Ministry of Agriculture worked with over 1,500 vegetable farmers across the country.  During this period he observed that the farmers do what they like and get away with it.

“Chemical are not being properly applied, one of the dangers we are also having is that they are not applying what we call the pre-harvest interval.”

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Pre- Harvest interval means knowing when to harvest the yields after applying pesticides, but most farmers harvest their crops immediately after pesticide application and bring them onto the market without considering the danger this could pose to consumers.

Djokoto says all these farmers must be checked as the source of the water for irrigating the crops could contain chemicals which may be harmful to humans.

He says the farmers are having the leeway because the Ministry of Agriculture which is responsible for ensuring farmers do the right things has neglected its duties.

“The extension system is crumbling because most of the guys are aging… and because most of them are aging and they are not being replaced the vacuum for the extension delivery system is widening.

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“You have the officers in the cities using Pickups which could have bought 10 - 15 motorbikes for the extension officers. You have the District director who is using car he is fueled by government the extension officer who I supposed to go to the farmer has to pre-finance his fuel before he is given tnt. This system doesn’t look fair.”

There are a lot of pesticides with inferior quality on the market and farmers who buy such cheap products are forced to apply it over and over again for the results they want. Djokoto wonders if the Environmental Protection Agency EPA is doing enough to track these influxes of pesticides on the market.

To sanitize the system and to ensure the safety of consumers of vegetables and fruits Djokoto recommends the Ministry of Agriculture “map out areas where we can deliver some foods from good places so that people can identify and go and buy to save them.”

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