Mango growers caution NGO on its anti-pesticide campaign

MANGO growers in Digos City last week cautioned the non-government organization Interface Development Interventions, Inc. (IDIS) on its campaign against pesticides which the growers claim claim is “grossly one-sided, misleading, lackadaisical and dampens people’s initiatives towards being more productive.”
The reaction came in the wake of an IDIS-organized forum at the Cor Jesu College here last Friday where a certain Dr. Alan Dionisio of UP Manila reportedly bandied a study blaming a mango plantation as the source of pesticide contamination in Sitio Baliwaga, Sta. Cruz municipality.
“It is pure speculation,” said Leonardo Castillo who has a six-tree orchard in Baliwaga. He said that the study team may not be familiar with the physical situation of Baliwaga as they failed to notice that it is a coastal village, but where rice is intensively cultivated and large fishponds are maintained.
“Singling out mango plantations as the source of pesticide contamination without clarifying the fact about limits allowed by law is disinformation,” he said, as he expressed fear that it will poison the minds of the youth and dampen their interest in a livelihood that is putting them through college. Castillo’s two sons are enrolled at Cor Jesus College in Digos City.
He said that the Department of Agriculture is repeatedly training them on maintaining physio-sanitary measures and that they have been paying close attention to the application of pesticides and other chemicals so that they can achieve better yields and at the same time make their fruits acceptable in the international market.
Meanwhile, Davao del Sur Gov. Douglas Cagas counseled the organizers of Dionisio’s forum to be balanced in their campaign against pesticides and not to forget that the farm sector has hundreds of thousands of families dependent on it for livelihood.
“Do you have an alternative for people losing their livelihood if the banana industry is destroyed?” he asked.
He said that the anti-aerial spray movement will be more relevant if they help in training subsistence farmers adopt precautionary meaures in the handling of pesticides and other chemicals essential to protecting crops from pests. [PR ]