Banning deadly pesticides ‘could trigger crop failure’
Updated | By Mmangaliso Khumalo
Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has warned that instituting a sudden ban on deadly pesticides such as terbufos could lead to crop failures.

Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has warned that instituting a sudden ban on deadly pesticides such as terbufos could lead to crop failures.
Steenhuisen briefed Parliament’s agriculture committee on the department’s response to last year’s deadly spate of pesticide poisonings.
This after the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and the Department of Health identified terbufos as the cause of several deaths, including the six children from Naledi in Soweto.
The children died after eating snacks bought at spaza shops.
Briefing the committee, Steenhuisen said a sudden ban on terbufos was not feasible as it is used as an insect control chemical in the farming industry.
"There's a number of aspects that need to be taken into consideration. Terbufos is very effective at what it does which is why it also finds its way onto the black market.
"Big countries that focus on big agricultural production, like the United States, still use terbufos because it is effective at what it does, and it's in that that lies the issue of how do we move people away from these hazardous pesticides on to better ones?
"It can't be something that just happens overnight because if we came out tomorrow and said, well, we're banning Terbufos without exploring alternatives and without allowing sectors to transition, you could end up then with huge problems with crop failure and crop destruction in the absence of an alternative. That starts to affect things like food security in the country, things like maize production and citrus production, which are also very important for our export economy."
Meanwhile, the Department's Director General, Mooketsa Ramasodi said the Department of Agriculture is navigating a complex transition as it prepares to separate from the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development.
Despite early engagement and strategic planning efforts, the department is facing staffing shortages and funding discrepancies.
Agriculture only receives 45% of the allocated budget and has limited positions to fill.
Ramasodi said a draft strategic plan is in progress, but with crucial positions unfilled and an unfinalised budget allocation, it remains unclear how the department will meet its goals.
"We had made a few suggestions that Agriculture needs to have a DDG responsible for corporate services, and we had made suggestions in terms of how we deal with the office of the CFO as prescribed by the PFMA.
"The Department of Agriculture would depart with a very skewed structure that would not have a DDG of corporate services or a CFO per se; all of those would be done at level 14, which is an anomaly. To rectify that, we have been advised that in the next six months, just after the first of April, we can come up with a structure that would be financed.
"I would just like to indicate to the committee that also presents a challenge because that would mean that for six months, there have got to be step-by-step arrangements being done in the department in order for that department to function; that's something that we are working with the DPSA to finalise.
"In terms of the split that we are having, it's almost from a personal point of view it's a 60-40 split with the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development having a major chunk of employees and the Department of Agriculture having just, I think, just over 2,100 in terms of field vacancies with 300 odd with a field post is 2,100 and then with 370 vacant positions that have got to be filled in the new department."
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