Pesticide Action Nexus Association Ethiopia is a civil society organization that works towards creating a safe and sustainable environment protected from harms posed by pesticides and other hazardous chemicals through the close collaboration of government, non-governmental organizations. civil society interest groups, and urban and rural communities.
Since 2005, PAN-Ethiopia has been working on mitigating the impacts of pesticides on human health and the environment in Central and Southern Rift Valley of Ethiopia, North Wester and Northeastern Ethiopia. Promoting ecological farming in different agroecological zones of Ethiopia has been PAN Ethiopia’s main work to ensure smallholder farmers have the capacity and skill to implement agroecology to reduce the use of external inputs. In promoting agroecology it focuses on three strategic inputs for agroecological farming: (i) Seed (ii) Soil health management and (iii) Plant protection. Sole dependence of the conventional agriculture through the use of external agrochemical inputs poses threats to biodiversity, human and environmental health and human wellbeing in general.
PAN Ethiopia believes that agroecology, with these strategy areas, has the potential to address the agricultural challenges the world is facing today. It is part of the PAN global network that has expertise especially on the soil health management and plant protection aspects of agroecology, and has been involved in this work for the past 15 years.
Promoting Integrated Pest Management (IPM) through hands–on trainings
Cotton IPM
PAN Ethiopia has been working with government and nongovernmental organizations in promoting local seeds, soil health enhancement and ecologically sound plant protection methods in areas where there is high pesticide use for crop production. It uses training approaches to motivate farmers’ participation and acknowledges indigenous knowledge in agriculture. Farmer Field Schools (FFS) is a practical hands-on training and extension approach that has been in use by PAN Ethiopia to help farmers develop their skills and enhance their capacity to critically analyse and make decisions to local agricultural challenges, especially on the aforementioned three strategic inputs.
The FFS approach is conducted by setting up demonstration plots as learning sites where farmers take practical sessions on a weekly basis covering the full crop lifecycle. Training on agroecology was started on cotton production with the main focus of cutting the use of toxic pesticides for cotton pest management purposes. The training was mainly on the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM).
A field based research on the use of supplementary food spray as an IPM component was done for three consecutive years from 2013 – 2015. The results were promising in conserving natural enemies (biocontrol agents) and managing cotton pests which were coupled with other physical and cultural pest management methods. Since 2016, the food spray based cotton IPM has been expanded through FFS approaches reaching 22 villages and training 8000+ farmers. Six agroecological cotton produced farmers cooperatives were established to further support and link them to lucrative markets – linking them with textile factories.
IPM for vegetable production
The food spray based IPM – an agro ecologically based pest and production management system expanded to vegetable production in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia where there is huge agrochemicals use – pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.
Using the same research and extension approach as in the cotton IPM, field learning sites were set up for practical training sessions – mainly on soil fertility enhancement and plant protection. The vegetable IPM project has demonstrated agroecological farming practices for farmers including transitioning into agroecological vegetable production from a fully conventional farming. Using straw mulching for tomato production for disease management, weed management and water conservation.
Agroecological practices for vegetable production including seed selection, seedling management, soil health management and plant protection were demonstrated through learning plots.
