Use of pesticides totally unregulated in An Giang, Viet Nam

With authorised agencies in An Giang failing to regulate the distribution of pesticides and other chemicals, farmers have been forced to fend for themselves, an agricultural official has admitted.

Doan Ngoc Pha, deputy director of the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces Agriculture and Rural Development Department, said farmers used chemicals to control plant diseases an average of 8.3 times a crop.

The market was flooded with thousands of chemical products but most farmers had little knowledge of their use, quality, or prices, he said.

There are 1,297 shops selling them but only 1 per cent of their owners have university degrees related to these subjects, while 20.5 per cent have intermediate level of agricultural or forestry education.

Though 78.5 per cent of the people registering for trading fertilisers and pesticides received training about them, few of them personally sell the products.

Poor monitoring means violations by traders in terms of quality or quantity are not checked, while testing centres in the province are snowed with work.

It takes the centres at least 15 days to test the quality of a product, Pha said.

Even if violations are detected, offenders get away with a slap on the wrist, he said.

Not surprisingly, 900 inspections done by the An Giang Province Market Watch team turned up 280 violations by traders.

There are several layers in the fertilisers and agricultural-chemical distribution system as a result of which the products prices increase by 30 and 40 per cent from the time they leave the factory gates, Pha said.

Farmers practice of buying on credit also contributes to increasing prices.

Dr Mai Anh Tuyet, member of the National Assemblys Economic Committee said the poor monitoring of the trading and use of plant-protection chemicals is not confined to An Giang and plagues many other provinces too.

Since 1996 there have been 60 legal documents on the fertiliser industry alone, but most of them proved to be of little effect.