Environmental Specialist with the Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana, Raphael Asuure has admonished farmers to be circumspect in the use of weedicides on their farms. He was speaking on A1 Radio’ current affairs programme, “Reporters’ Visit”.
In recent past there have been cases of food poisoning as well as poisoning of water bodies as a result of poor hand washing habits after using weedicides, wrong application on farms and wrong methods of disposing used weedicide containers.
Many farmers prefer “killing” the weeds on their farms with weedicides instead of weeding them off with hoes and cutlasses, unfortunately, many rural farmers especially are not able to read cautions on the containers of these weedicides and so end up using them wrongly and disposing the used containers on open dumping sites or throwing them into water bodies.
According to Mr. Asuure these practices end up bringing particles of the poisonous substances in the weedicides into foods at home and into water bodies.
He has advised that Agric Extension Officers to intensify education on the proper use and handling of weedicides to avoid the perennial reports of poisoning of food and water bodies.
Mr. Asuure hinted that the continuous use of weedicides on farms could render the land infertile with time and also poses health hazards to the farmers and the general public.
Source: A1radioonline.com | Joshua Asaah | Ghana
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