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My Experience with PHIs on Vegetables
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Written on: Wednesday, 8 October 2008 (02:53)
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drsbanerji
registered since: 28.09.2008
Posts: 6
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I started my career in pesticides as a sales-person. That is why I took time to accept Stewardship as a professional imperative for staying in this business.
My first encounter with Stewardship was on the issue of small (100 ml) packs of pesticides and their pricing levels. We used to sell these packs at relatively low margins to encourage small rice-paddy farmers to use our products. However, a Stewardship audit showed that the packs were also used by vegetable farmers to protect their crops very close to harvest. I am from India, and it is common for vegetable farmers here to spray right up to the day of harvest. Regulation is practically non-existent, and there are no checks on vegetables before they enter retail markets in urban areas.
We responded by withdrawing small packs from all vegetable areas. This resulted in some losses of sales in rice-paddy areas also. However, the losses of revenue were worthwhile because we were able to continue with a molecule that came under attack in other countries.
I am now a convert to Stewardship!
Self-regulation to ensure that PHIs are observed is a sturdy way to protect proprietary and strategic molecules. I welcome views and experiences on this subject.
A PHI stands for Pre-Harvest Interval. It is the number of days that should elapse after a pesticide application and before a harvest. It is fixed for each pesticide at the time of registration. It generally varies between 7 and 15 days, though it may be longer or shorter for certain molecules.
[This article was edited 1 times, at last 08.10.2008 at 13:30.]
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