Case Stories

Mr. Mahadev Khadka, upon receiving training, has been applying botanical pesticides in his vegetable farming and produced a bitter guard weighing of 350 gram. He sold 250 kg of cucumber and sponge guard grown in 15 Dhur land and gained NRs. 10,000 against NRs. 3,000 expense. He has recently grown bodi (bean) in his five Dhur land area and is constructing 6×12 feet plastic tunnel.

The IPM-FFS training enabled him to identify pests and diseases occurred in the agriculture crops and also manage those pests by using botanical pesticides. He began making botanical pesticides for using them in the field and has been sharing and teaching about how to make botanical pesticides to his neighbors. He felt that he became an expert of botanical pesticides for which he expressed his gratitude to the FFS. Indeed, the IPM-FSS training has been very effective, according to him.

Mrs. Tara Bartaula and Mr. Hari P Bartaula run a Agro-vet outlet in Bhandara, Rapti municipality. Over the past decade, they have been running agro-vet and used to keep agro pesticides and vet medicines together in the same corner. Of them, Mrs. Tara had received three days IPM training on the pesticide minimization retail selling and since then she used to keep the two commodities in two separate corners.

Mrs. Bartaula told that she used to aware all customers who visited their shop that pesticides are not medicines, instead they are poisons and that they should use protective measures while spraying pesticides. Bartaula couple not used to use mask and glove while staying in the shop. They also used to aware sprayers about importance of personal protective equipment (PPE).

Mr. Phirilla Mardaniya was a pesticide sprayer as well as a farmer engaged in the banana farming. Phirilla used to spray pesticides in his neighbours’ crop fields and later only in his crop field without using any safety measures. As a result, he got to see different types of allergies in his body during that time.

After obtaining the IPM training, according to his wife, Mr. Phirilla got fully aware of ill-effects of pesticide sprayer and always used all safety measures while spraying and used to keep the tank cleaning with water in a separate room away from their living house to avoid pungent smell.

“In this ten years of my career. I have never participated in any training or program related on pesticide issue. This training made me realize that we have been ignoring this awakening issue and jeopardizing people health in our community. This self-realization provided me energy to do something. Returning after the training, I communicated with other participants from Kalika municipality and asked them to come in solidarity in this pesticide minimization campaign. We talked about this with members of school management committee. Having their approval and to make this campaign more systematic, we formed a group named ‘Kalika Agro Society’. After that we conducted awareness programs like inter school speech competition on pesticide and health effects for the lower secondary level students. We are now mobilizing students in survey about the situation of pesticide use at the community level. We are also looking forward to organize more informing program on pesticide through rallies and quiz contest.”- Sajan Thapa Magar (Shree Siddhi Vinayak Sec. English Boarding School, Chitwan)

Deepak Khadka, a teacher of Shree Siddhartha Secondary School at Jagatpur expressed his gratefulness to NPHF for proving opportunity to participate in the training that offered to him to learn about the pesticides and its harmful effects on health from the training. Before training, With the help of the training teaching materials, Mr. Khadka delivered classes about pesticides and its adverse effects on health and surrounding environment and prevention measures for grades 8, 9 and 10 and expressed his commitment for the continuation of this awareness program to the students on weekly routine basis. He said that, “as most of the students are from the farmer families having agricultural background, this awareness program would be beneficial for them and the knowledge would also be transformed to their parents and neighbours as well.”

Chitra Kumar Sunuwar, the in-charge of the Geetanagar Health Post expressed his gratefulness to the Nepal Public Health Foundation for providing opportunity to learn about the IPM method and shared, “IPM is an effective measure to reduce harmful effects of pesticides and this must be used by all farmers.” Having realized the importance of IPM, the Ward Chairperson has been encouraged and would allocate budget to initiate the pesticide minimization program at the ward level in the coming fiscal year.

A FCHV of Geetanagar, Ms. Bhima Pandey, who participated in the IPM training and realized its importance, demanded that at least one-day awareness program be organized for communities, as well as for the farmers especially the pregnant and lactating mothers as their diet habit directly linked with the health of their child, so that they would aware with adverse effects of the pesticides and their safe handling.