Tech Researchers Aid Malian Agriculture

By Miriam Rich

Researchers at Virginia Tech have been working with Malian agricultural scientists and educators to develop materials for teaching farmers about pesticide safety. The impacts are many: produce is passing safety standards for export, farmers’ income levels are rising, and fewer pesticides in the environment means a healthier place to live for both people and plants.

As part of this work, in late May and early June, the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program (IPM CRSP) sponsored a first-of-its-kind professional development workshop in Bamako, Mali for pesticide safety educators in West Africa.

“The workshop was a great chance to let others see what we have been doing and why,” explains Pat Hipkins, assistant coordinator of Virginia Tech Pesticide Programs. “To a person, everyone was glad to get the materials and put them to use.”

West African pesticide educators at a workshop in Mali.

Hipkins, along with Tech researchers Don Mullins and Jean Cobb, has been working in Mali for nine years developing pesticide safety programs. “Farmers told us they didn’t realize that one pesticide is more toxic than another, or that some pesticides kill some insects and not others.”

At the workshop, attended by over 60 people representing 20 agencies from 5 West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Senegal and Mali), pesticide safety trainers met to exchange information, identify pesticide safety program needs, discuss collaborative efforts, and share techniques for measuring impacts.

Model Program

The program on safety education that Tech originally developed in Mali in cooperation with agricultural scientists and educators from the Institute for Rural Economy and the Upper Niger Valley Operation has become so successful that the Pesticide Safety Education Team is looking to expand it to other parts of the country as well as other countries in West Africa.  At the end of the workshop, participants from Burkina Faso asked the Tech-Mali team to hold a similar workshop in their country.  The biggest proof of the program’s success, says Hipkins, is that “Tech’s Malian partners are getting requests from villages and other agencies in Mali, begging for people to come do the training for them. It’s been a boon.” says Hipkins.

Tech’s long-time presence in West Africa managing the USAID-funded IPM CRSP program has given it an advantage in terms of experience and credibility, but this isn’t the only reason it has a good reputation. The researchers have developed a high-quality program designed to have a lasting impact. “Other organizations come through with a PowerPoint, run through it, and walk out the door. We leave people with books, lesson plans, lists of materials, booklets for the farmers, and booklets in poster formats for the trainers to use with illiterate farmers and for teaching large groups,” says Hipkins.

Tech’s “train the trainer” model gives pesticide safety lesson plans, teaching tips, and support materials to agricultural agency resource people who work with farmers. These trainers, in turn, integrate pesticide safety into production meetings and other field-based programs.

Unexpected Benefit: Raising Literacy Rates

In addition to creating products to leave behind, Tech educators produced these materials in the local languages, such as Wolof and Bamanan. As Bamanan has only recently been codified into a written language, printed materials in this language are scarce. Tech researchers who later returned to a village where they had conducted a pesticide training workshop discovered that local teachers were using the pesticide booklets as readers to teach reading and writing. So in addition to providing training in proper pesticide use, the booklets are supporting the country’s rural literacy initiative.

Virginia Tech’s Office of International Research, Education, and Development (OIRED) has managed the IPM CRSP since it first won the USAID-funded contract in 1993. The IPM CRSP develops and implements approaches to integrated pest management that help raise the standard of living and improve the environment in 32 countries around the world. Virginia Tech partners with 22 American universities in implementing this program, and over 50 host country institutions.

When the contract was re-competed in 2004, OIRED again won the award, funded at $17 million for 5 years. On the same day, OIRED won the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management CRSP, also for $17 million.

CRSPs allow USAID to leverage the capabilities of U.S. land grant universities to carry out the international food and agricultural research mandate of the U.S. government. At present, there are nine CRSPs, two of them managed by Virginia Tech.