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Mapping gendered pest management knowledge, practices, and pesticide exposure pathways in Ghana and Mali

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Abstract

Global food security challenges demand an understanding of farmers’ gendered practices and perspectives. This research draws on data from a quantitative survey and qualitative methods to explore gender differences related to farmers’ practices, perceptions, and knowledge of pesticides and other pest management practices in tomato growing regions of Ghana and Mali. A pathways approach based on participatory mapping integrates findings and reveals gender differences in labor and knowledge at different stages of tomato production. Farmers in both countries are heavily reliant on pesticides, but there are also differences in pest management knowledge and practices between them. In Mali, farmers are more familiar with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices, but less aware of potential health risks of pesticides and more likely to engage in dangerous agro-chemical practices. In both countries, women are significantly less aware of pesticide dangers and IPM techniques than men and exposed to pesticides though a variety of pathways. We argue that the gender division of labor and differences in access to resources, information, and power between the two sites leads to gendered pesticide exposure pathways that are often unseen by the biological scientists who tend to focus on the field. Gender inequalities in knowledge and unsafe practices were particularly apparent in Mali compared to Ghana, possibly due to the lower literacy rates and decision making power of women and their narrower range of involvement in tomato production. The article concludes with gender sensitive recommendations to improve IPM research methods, trainings, and technology diffusion.

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Notes

  1. The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Integrated Pest Management (the IPM Innovation Lab) is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under cooperative agreement No. EPP-A-00-04-00016-00.

  2. The three regions were: Brong Ahafo (28 % or 84 respondents), Ashanti (27 % or 78 respondents), and Upper East (45 % or 131 respondents).

  3. When “significance” is used in this paper it refers to a p value for difference in means less than .01. Significance values in Mali were calculated using a simple independent t test, while a Welch’s test was used in Ghana due to the unequal sample sizes and potentially unequal variances.

  4. Email communication with Joyce Haleegoah, Sept 9, 2014, who is a Research Scientist in the Socio-economics Division of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Institute in Kumasi, Ghana. She assisted with the field work in Ghana.

  5. These statistics (Table 2) average the participation across the three villages in Mali. In Dafara 100 % of the women interviewed reported using resistant varieties and practicing the host free period. In the other two villages less than 20 % of women used either of these methods of pest control. It is likely that Dafara benefited from other IPM activities conducted in neighboring villages.

  6. Typically a hut separate from the bedrooms.

  7. Other research shows that women were more familiar with the potential harmful effects of pesticides: Erbaugh et al. (2002) (in Uganda) or Pouratashi and Irvani (2012) (in Iran).

Abbreviations

CRI:

Crops Research Institute

FAO:

Food and Agriculture Organization

FGD:

Focus group discussion

IER:

Institut d’Économie Rurale

IPM:

Integrated Pest Management

USAID:

United States Agency for International Development

WHO:

World Health Organization

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Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Integrated Pest Management (the IPM Innovation Lab) funded by the United States Agency for International Development under cooperative agreement No. EPP-A-00-04-00016-00. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID. We would like to thank Mah Koné Diallo of the Office de la Haute Vallée du Niger (OHVN), Mali, Joyce Haleegoah and Awere Dankyi of Crops Research Institute in Ghana, for assistance in this research, and Virginia Tech graduate Rachel Kirk for help processing the data from Mali. Figure two is an inset from an image originally published in Gender Technology and Development, Vol. 18 No. 2 Copyright 2014 © Asian Institute of Technology. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holders and the publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi.

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  1. Office of International Research, Education, and Development, Virginia Tech, 526 Prices Fork Road, Blacksburg, VA, 24060, USA

    Maria Elisa Christie & Emily Van Houweling

  2. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2033 K St, NW, Washington, DC, 20006-1002, USA

    Laura Zseleczky

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  1. Maria Elisa Christie
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Correspondence to Maria Elisa Christie.

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Christie, M.E., Van Houweling, E. & Zseleczky, L. Mapping gendered pest management knowledge, practices, and pesticide exposure pathways in Ghana and Mali. Agric Hum Values 32, 761–775 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9590-2

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