By John Myers Jr., Staff ReporterDr. Andre Gordon, president of the Jamaica Exporters Association (JEA), says high pesticide residue on export crops has already cost the country "hundreds of thousands of US (United States) dollars" in export earnings because of rejection.
"Millions of Jamaican dollars are what you are taking about," Dr. Gordon told The Gleaner recently, while noting that the problem has been on the decline for the last 18 months.
He was reacting to concerns raised by Hyacinth Chin Sue, registrar of the Pesticides Control Authority (PCA), who has pointed out that "some markets for our produce would grow by now if farmers (had) reached a stage where they understood how to use pesticides correctly."
MAJOR PROBLEM
Another JEA official, Ains-worth Riley said the situation was a "major problem especially for agricultural goods being exported to the EU (European Union) market where there are prescribed standards with which one must comply. "In the event that they decide to take a sample of your commodity and test and decide that the residue level is above a rate that is tolerated, then you know that it is going to impact greatly on the market because they are going to turn away the produce," said Bailey.
YAMS AND CALLALOO
Dr. Gordon noted that the problem was more common place with yams and callaloo. According to him, the problem exists mainly because "some farmers do not observe the instructions for the proper use of pesticides." As a result, he noted that "a lot of exporters have found that they have to select carefully the farmers they work with or train those that they want to work with to meet their requirements, otherwise the shipments get rejected at the ports of entry and it is a very expensive point at which to have a shipment rejected and dumped."
The JEA president explained that the acceptable standards were varying, depending on the type of pesticide used. In a bid to rectify the situation, he said the JEA was working closely with the US Embassy here and the US Department of Agriculture to come up with a solution to the problem.
The PCA and the Bureau of Standards are also working together to develop a suitable conversion table to better assist farmers in the use of pesticides.
