Do Beliefs About Herbicide Quality Correspond with Actual Quality in Local Markets? Evidence from Uganda

Abstract

Adoption of modern agricultural inputs in Africa remains low, restraining agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. Low quality agricultural inputs may in part explain low adoption rates, but only if farmers are aware that some inputs are low quality. We report the results of laboratory tests of the quality of glyphosate herbicide in Uganda and investigate whether farmers' beliefs about the prevalence of counterfeiting and adulteration are consistent with the prevalence of low quality in their local market. We find that the average bottle in our sample is missing 15 per cent of the active ingredient and 31 per cent of samples contain less than 75 per cent of the ingredient advertised. Farmers believe 41 per cent of herbicide is counterfeit or adulterated. Beliefs are significantly correlated with quality at the local market level, but beliefs remain inaccurate, adjusting for only a fraction of actual differences in quality. Price is also significantly correlated with quality in local markets, but prices also adjust for only a fraction of quality differences. Although, like fertiliser and hybrid maize seed, herbicide in Uganda is low quality, herbicide use is substantially higher.

Do farmers perceive risks of fraudulent pesticides? Evidence from Saudi Arabia

“…In the context of frauds, high risk perception enables farmers to protect themselves by purchasing only products duly registered by governmental regulators [36]. This result is in line with the study of Ashour et al (2019) [8], who revealed that 80% of the farmers in Uganda had high beliefs about counterfeit herbicides. On the other hand, a comparison of farmers who had purchased fraudulent pesticides and those who had not showed an interesting result.…”

“…Accordingly, they might be more aware of risks of fraudulent pesticides compared to farmers who have not purchased them before. This result is supported by the study of Ashour et al (2019) [8], who reported that farmers who had purchased counterfeit herbicides had a high awareness of their risks and 31% of them had avoided purchasing herbicides in the next year from the same sources because of counterfeiting.…”

“…There are different potential risks associated with fraudulent pesticides. At an agricultural production level, such pesticides can severely damage crops, resulting in a decreased yield or destroying a field, and pose severe health risks to the farmers through exposure during application [8]. Furthermore, residues of unknown and untested substances in foods can negatively affect consumers' health [9,10].…”

Variable Soils, Variable Fertilizer Quality, and Variable Prospects

“…Uganda exhibits similar quality problems for mineral fertilizers (Bold, Kaizzi, Svensson, & Yanagizawa-Drott, 2015) and glyphosate (Ashour, Billings, Gilligan, Hoel, & Karachiwalla, 2016). Moreover, Fairbairn et al (2017) find evidence of degradation in physical quality characteristics of fertilizer (mineral fertilizer that is clumpy, powdery, and discolored); they also find that suppliers with limited credit access and poor storage are also more likely to sell mineral fertilizer of degraded visual quality and compromised content.…”

An Environmental Justice Perspective on Smallholder Pesticide Use in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…One particularity of smallholder's pesticide use is their dependence on unauthorized dealers, who often sell products of dubious quality and origin (Ndayambaje et al, 2019;Negatu et al, 2016;Okonya et al, 2019) and with limited knowledge about the products (Yami & van Asten, 2018). Many SSA countries struggle with the problem of illegally sold and/or counterfeit agrochemicals, which may be adulterated or contain banned compounds (Ashour et al, 2019;Okolle et al, 2016). Ashour et al (2019) found that a majority of the herbicides sampled from Ugandan markets contained a different concentration than advertised.…”