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 The use of spurious pesticides has exacerbated losses in the
genetically modified (GM) cotton crop in northern India after an
attack by whitefly, a pest, say officials. If unchecked, some of
India's roughly $26 billion in annual farm exports could be hit.
Made secretly and given names that sometimes resemble the original,
counterfeits account for up to 30 percent of the $4 billion
pesticide market, according to a government-endorsed study.
And they are gaining market share in what is the world's No.4
pesticide maker and sixth biggest exporter.
Influential dealers in small towns peddle high-margin fake products
to gullible farmers, in turn hurting established firms like Syngenta,
Bayer CropScience, DuPont, BASF, PI Industries, Rallis India and
Excel Crop Care.
"We are illiterate farmers; we seek advice from the vendor and just
spray on the crop," said Harbans Singh, a farmer in Punjab's
Bathinda region, whose three-acre (1.2-hectare) GM cotton crop was
damaged by whitefly this year.
"It's a double loss when you see the crop wilting away and your
money is spent on pesticides that don't work."
But S.N. Sushil, who heads India's top pesticide testing laboratory
in Faridabad, near Delhi, said farmers panic at the first sight of a
pest attack.
As a result, they overuse chemicals, reducing their effectiveness
and raising costs.
Sushil's team worked overtime after Punjab sent nearly 1,000 samples
of suspect pesticides following the whitefly outbreak, finding some
to be falsely labeled.
Indian officials tested nearly 50,000 pesticide samples last fiscal
year, finding around 3 percent of them "misbranded", Sushil said.
He added the government was increasing inspections and looking to
increase penalties, including jail terms of up to 10 years.
TOXIC RACKET
Lax laws, which punish by revoking licenses or imposing short jail
terms for offenders, and staffing shortages compromise efforts to
track and seize substandard products.
Toxic pesticides that are banned abroad continue, meanwhile, to be
sold freely in India.
India still permits the use of monocrotophos, a pesticide blamed for
the death of 23 children in Bihar in 2013 after they ate
contaminated free school lunches. That tragedy prompted the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to advise
developing countries to phase out such chemicals.
"Use of excessive pesticides has been a cause for concern for quite
some time," said Shyam Khadka, FAO's India representative. "Now if
they turn out to be spurious it's a cause for even greater worry."
Chronic exposure to pesticides can lead to depression, a factor in
suicides, he said. Pesticides can also cause cancer.
In recent years the European Union and Saudi Arabia temporarily
stopped buying some vegetables from India after finding pesticide
residues in produce. Indian officials say such cases result from the
overuse of chemicals.
RAPID GROWTH IN FAKES
India's fake pesticide industry is expanding at 20 percent per year
while the overall market is growing at 12 percent.
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"We know that a racket is going on," said P.K. Chakrabarty, an
assistant director general of Indian Council of Agricultural
Research. "But it is only when suspicion arises that people go to
inspect."
He also said illegal chemicals are imported "under the garb of good
material", and that there was a "definite risk" of some fake
pesticides being exported from India, although there was no evidence
yet.
"Theoretically it becomes a risk, but practically there are checks
and balances," said Gantakolla Srivastava, CEO of CropLife India, an
association of the top pesticide companies operating in the country.
KNOCK OFFS
Karnataka state authorities this month seized large stocks of "Korajen",
an illegal copy of DuPont's Coragen used to kill rice pests. Police
are investigating similar cases elsewhere, DuPont said.
Punjab has also filed police cases against fake pesticide makers and
arrested a senior official at its agriculture university for
allowing the sale of counterfeits.
Apart from counterfeiting, India is also grappling with rising cases
of unmonitored chemicals passed off as herbal pesticides, said
Srivastava.
India loses about 4 percent, or over 10 million tonnes, of food
output a year due to fake pesticides, said the government-backed
study.
"There has been a trend of increasing consumption of (fake)products
as against the regular ones," said Manish Panchal of Tata Strategic
Management Group that conducted the study.
"All stakeholders should be worried ... it's going to hit food
security."
Last year spurious fungicides cut apple production in Jammu &
Kashmir state, while farming lobbyists have linked recent farmer
suicides in Odisha to fake pesticides.
Some producers say they have been wrongly targeted by government
laboratories. Coromandel Agrico, for example, was accused of selling
falsely labeled products.
Tests that found it selling pesticides in incorrect dosages were
inaccurate, said Vipin Bisht, the company's regulatory affairs
officer.
"We will not take the risk of selling sub-standard products," Bisht
said. "The problem is at the dealer/distributor level. Similar
sounding products are made, mixed, sold."
(Additional reporting by Rupam Jain Nair in BHATINDA, Jatindra Dash
in BHUBANESWAR and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Douglas
Busvine and Mike Collett-White)
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