In India, thousands of tonnes of crop gets destroyed every year due to improper use of insecticides, pesticides, plant growth regulators etc. This destruction of crop can happen either if a farmer uses these chemicals without any scientific knowledge by themselves or by relying on their local shops. Most of the times, the people handling these local shops do not have any scientific knowledge or an official degree by themselves and suggest chemicals based upon what may have worked for some other farmers. This way of recommending chemical solutions to farmers is non-intuitive and more often than not ends up providing a completely wrong solution to the farmer. Even more often, these local shops have their own commercial interests and suggest chemicals from the companies from which they have business tie-ups with. By doing this, they end up suggesting completely irrelevant and ineffective solutions to the farmers. And, the most worst case scenario is, when these local vendors end up suggesting chemicals banned by the government and the relevant authorities. The farmer has no means to identify whether the chemicals suggested by their local shops and even the ones which they use by their own previous knowledge are approved by the government authorities or not.

One such case came into our attention when one farmer shared his problem with us on Farmonaut’s discussion forum. And when the details unfolded, it was really disappointing.