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Muhammad Abbas, a central Punjab farmer, lost 70 acres of his watermelon crop in 2021 to a herbicide, Pre-Act, made by a Pakistani agrochemical manufacturer, AgPharma.

Toxicity effect of expired pesticides on crops

Muhammad Abbas, a central Punjab farmer, lost 70 acres of his watermelon crop in 2021 to a herbicide, Pre-Act, made by a Pakistani agrochemical manufacturer, AgPharma.

Abbas originally belongs to Nowshera Virkan tehsil of Gujranwala district in central Punjab. He, however, has moved as far north as the town of Rathana in Sargodha district where he has rented farmland at an annual rate of 50,000 rupees per acre.

Early last year after he shifted his watermelon seedlings to his fields, he decided to remove excessive grass and weeds from the land in order to let his crop grow better. To make an informed decision, he sought advice from Nasr Hayat who not only runs a business selling agrochemicals but also works as a sales officer at AgPharma in the nearby town of Radhan.

He advised Abbas to use Pre-Act. Following his advice, Abbas purchased and sprayed Pre-Act all over his fields. Consequently, his entire crop was scorched. The wasted seedlings caused him a &ldquo;loss of 10 million rupees&rdquo;, he says and alleges that the herbicide sold to him was not only substandard but also expired.

Devastated, he confronted Hayat about the havoc Pre-Act had wreaked upon his crop. At first, Hayat completely dismisses his claim, denying that Pre-Act could have anything to do with the scorched crop whatsoever. His behaviour, however, changed when many other local farmers also started backing Abbas&rsquo;s complaints. He, then, promised to inform the company about the whole fiasco.

A few days later, a senior representative of AgPharma, Muhammad Shehbaaz Akhtar, came to inspect the fields of the aggrieved farmers.

During his visit, he assured the farmers that soon the company will send a team to assess their losses after which they will be compensated.

Abbas says the farmers made Akhtar write down all his promises and claims on paper. They hoped that they would be able to use the document to hold the company accountable at a court of law if it went back on its word. To their dismay, even with this precautionary measure, AgPharma did not fulfil its promise.

Tired of waiting for the company to respond, Abbas then turned to the government for help. He not only submitted a complaint about the damage to his crop to the agriculture department&rsquo;s office in Sargodha but also informed the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Citizen Portal.

A few days after he had submitted his complaint, Salim Gul, an assistant director of the Directorate-General for Pest Warning and Quality Control of Pesticides, a subsidiary of the agricultural department, visited his fields.

He later stated in his report that he inspected Abbas&#39;s fields on March 9th, 2021, but by then a new watermelon crop had replaced the scorched seedlings. This made it impossible for him to determine the extent of the damage, he wrote.

He also could not give his opinion about the quality of the herbicide used or its expiry date. He, however, did indicate that Abbas used Pre-Act after shifting the seedlings to the fields although he should have done so before their transfer.

What, though, is noteworthy about this report is that it declared Pre-Act to be unsuitable for any crop other than cotton and broad-leafed vegetables such as cabbage.

Based on all these factors, he came to the conclusion that the person responsible for Abbas&rsquo;s destroyed crop was the one who had advised him to use Pre-Act.

An agriculture department team, that also came to inspect his fields, arrived at the same conclusion: Hayat and by extension, the company that he represented as a sales officer, were to be blamed for the debacle.

<h2>From Complaints to Lawsuits</h2>

Abbas has filed a case against AgPharma at a consumer court in Sargodha since the end of March 2021. In his complaint to the court, he has taken the stand that not only was he sold a defective and expired chemical, but the company and its local representative also gave him false information about its usage and possible benefits.

Proceedings in the case have been going on for more than a year now. &ldquo;The company has been dragging it unnecessarily. Its lawyers fail to show up in court sometimes and seek adjournment at others on the pretext of lacking necessary documents,&rdquo; says Abbas.

He cannot afford the case to drag any further than it already has for he can no longer bear its legal expenses. &ldquo;I am already under immense debt due to the lost crop. This lawsuit is merely adding to that debt,&rdquo; he says. Even if he can bear the financial burden of the case, he has no guarantee that the lawsuit will turn out in his favour.

Ghulam Rasool went through a similar ordeal in 2017. A farmer in Chashtiyan tehsil of Bahawalnagar district in south Punjab. He filed a case against Jaffer Agro in a consumer court in Bahawalnagar on July 6th, 2017. He contended that his six and a half acres of sugarcane crop were laid to waste due to the company&rsquo;s substandard and expired chemicals that he had used. Two years later, on August 29th, 2019, the court ruled against him, stating that he was unable to prove to the court beyond reasonable doubt that the chemical used was indeed of low quality.

A similar, if not the same, thing happened to another farmer, Hafizullah Bajwa, of Gujranwala district. He had filed a case against an international agrochemical manufacturer in 2010. Eight acres of his wheat crop had been lost after he had used the chemical made by that company, costing him 402,500 rupees. His victory, however, proved to be a hollow one.

In its ruling issued on March 3rd, 2011, the court clearly stated that the chemical sold to him was indeed expired. It, however, declared that he only deserved a meagre sum of 90,580 rupees as compensation.

<h2>Drug Testing Standards</h2>

Dr. Shahid Hussain works as an assistant director at the Directorate General of Pest Warning and Quality Control of Pesticides in Multan. In his opinion, the reason why court proceedings get stretched in such cases is that the companies raise questions over the laboratories that conduct quality tests on agrochemicals.

His observation is backed by what transpired in three cases lodged against Asghar Traders at the Multan bench of Lahore high court all filed on February 7th, 2018. According to the complaints in these cases, the owners of Asghar Traders had sold poor-quality agrochemicals to many farmers. Responding to these allegations in court, the company raised questions over the eligibility of laboratory reports presented in the case.

The court upheld its stand and ruled:

&quot;The FIR in these cases was registered based on laboratory reports which were not verified by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO)&quot;. All the cases registered against Asghar Traders were dropped then and there.

In its detailed judgement, the court referred to a report made by a task force set up by the Punjab government and said, &ldquo;most government laboratories are neither well-equipped nor standardized hence their results are very different from each other&quot;. Suggesting a solution to this problem, it stated, &ldquo;the rules (made) for the production and sale of agrochemicals in 1973 mandated that all laboratories inspecting agrochemicals be certified by the ISO&quot;

The court also said: &ldquo;Not only do laboratories have to be certified by the ISO, but each report issued by them must also follow all the ISO regulations and procedures that apply to each test conducted by them.&rdquo; There also needs to be regular monitoring of the labs to make sure that tall these rules and regulations are being implemented in each test, it stated. 
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Muhammad Aslam, who retired as the director-general of the Pest Warning and Quality Control of Pesticides a few months ago, says, &ldquo;the aforementioned court order is not practicable&rdquo;. Although all the government laboratories operating in Punjab are certified by the ISO, he says, it is not possible for them to implement the ISO regulations and procedures applicable to each test.

About 14,000 agrochemicals are made in Pakistan using around 900 chemical ingredients. The ISO, according to him, has laid down separate regulations and procedures for testing each of them, he explains. Most of the time, he says, huge financial and human resources are required to implement all these regulations and procedures but these finances are not available to any Pakistani institution associated with agriculture.

Aslam also says this department has filed three appeals at the Lahore High Court on the same basis against the aforementioned decision of the Multan bench in the case against Asghar Traders. Two of them have not been accepted for hearing but the third one is yet to be taken up. He hopes it will not only be accepted for hearing soon but its outcome will go against Asghar Traders.

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