Strict regulations on pesticide overuse to lift the organic fertilizer

As of the overuse of pesticide in the intensive crops in Vietnam, the soil quality was lower and lower after 5 and 7 years after growing, said Luong Huu Thanh, official from the  Institute for Agricultural Environment (IAE), Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Thanh said: “The impact of soil quality degradation on crop cultivation, especially the Central Highlands and Mekong Delta provinces are alarming.”

He said while the soil in the areas has been more and more damaged with drought and saline in the last three years, the overuse of pesticide has made the soil more terrible, killing fruit orchards in the region.

After different surveys and experiments with agriculture experts, Thanh suggested using balanced and organic fertilizers along with microbiological preparations to improve the situation.

Thanh confirmed: “If we cultivate the crop with only pesticide, the microbiota in the soil will be almost gone.

Thanh said: “Farmers who grow dragon fruit in some areas spray 26-27 times of pesticide within a crop of three months. With such a frequency of using such chemicals, it would be very difficult for any microorganism to survive.”

Thanh clarified in many highly intensive agricultural production areas, most of the farmers overuse the inorganic fertilizers, which leads the declining of the microbiological system in the soil and lower productivity of the crop as the result.

In the last three years, the use of biological products and organic fertilizers in agriculture production has been noticed with more investment on organic fertilizer production and microbiological products.

With the demand in Vietnam, experts thought the market for those products was extremely large and it was time for effective biological products to completely replace chemical pesticide to improve the environment and reduce production costs.

However, they mentioned if there was no control mechanism strictly enough to control the quality of the products, there could be a lot possible fake organic products, which was still chemicals.

Nguyen The Quyet, Agricultural Genetics Institute, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said: “Now the authorities only check the registered active ingredients of the fertilizer, they also need to check whether the products were added with some banned pesticides to best super the fertilizer quality.”

While the use of organic fertilizers took longer result on the crop, a fact that they were not as available and more expensive than the pesticide was also a big problem for the use.

Thanh, from IAE mentioned a fact: “There is a surplus of organic fertilizers from the husbandry industry but there is lack of such products in the fruit orchard production. Many cattle growers pollute the environment by throwing their manure and waste, which is the organic fertilizer for the fruit orchard while the orchard must use pesticide. Both actions are killing the environment.”

In many countries, livestock businesses are forced to pay plantation businesses and farms to transport, treat and use the waste from their animals as organic fertilizer. In Vietnam, the story was totally different, said Thanh adding: “Cultivation businesses and farms have to pay such products from livestock farms. “

At the same time, organic, microbiological fertilizers that are produced and properly packaged were still too expensive.

Currently, organic fertilizers on the market have to bear a lot of intermediate costs so the cheapest price was VND2,000 (about US$0.1)per kg. As f estimation, the average use of organic fertilizers cost VND10 million(US$434) per ha per crop. Thanh added: “It is too expensive compared to with the use of chemicals. Therefore, farmers are not eager to use organic fertilizers.”

He considered: “If farmers can easily access high quality and cheap organic fertilizers, they will definitely use them, which will create an improvement the quality of agricultural soil in a sustainable manner.”

In this case, Thanh said to increase the use of organic fertilizers, to improve the environment and soil biota, there should be stronger policies for the matter.