Call for urgent SA pesticide action plan to protect farm workers — and consumers

The African Centre for Biodiversity (Acbio) released a compilation of the past two decades of research on pesticide use in South Africa on 21 July 2025, in the form of a searchable and downloadable database. The centre hopes this will help with advocacy for policy change and the banning of certain pesticides. 

The aim is to help “collective efforts to push the government to prioritise the urgent complete overhaul of the regulatory framework governing the use of pesticides, ensuring its rigorous implementation and heeding the persistent calls for the banning of the most hazardous chemicals and the phase-out of others”. 

Executive director of the African Centre for Biodiversity Mariam Mayet said it probably took about six researchers four to five months to complete the database, along with computer science specialists and assistance from artificial intelligence.

In an interview with Daily Maverick, Mayet said, “The first thing we had to do was to find all the research papers over a period of two decades. We decided to look at what happened over 20 years. And that took a long time, because we had to find, firstly, all the peer review journal articles, then any other research reports and documents that were put together by researchers and civil society over the last 20 years”.

Mayet said they interviewed the researchers to understand what impact the papers had and if the government responded to the findings, although some were in intergovernmental discussions. Mayet pointed out that the government was hard to pin down for engagement on agro-toxins.

“We had to go and interview a lot of these researchers who had participated in intergovernmental bodies to find out the extent to which they … made submissions that may not have been in the public domain… But then also, we did follow-ups with every researcher or institution to find out from them what happened after they published the research.

“Did they bring this to the attention of the government? What were the steps that the government took, if at all? Because the one frustration we’ve been having for the last 20 years or more is just complete intransigence on the part of the state.

“You know, Act 36 was passed at the time when King George VI was the head of state of South Africa … [nearly] 80 years ago,” Mayet said.

Read more: Farmworkers’ plight: Human cost of food on our plate and wine in our glass

The Act she is referring to is the Act 36 of 1947, known as the Fertilisers, Farm Feeds, Seeds and Remedies Act, which regulates the registration and sale of fertilisers, farm feeds, agricultural remedies and stock remedies. Its key provisions include registration, regulation and appointment of officials.

Mayet is part of a large group of activists who have been calling for the laws to be updated and for other measures to be implemented to protect vulnerable groups such as farmworkers from exposure, which can lead to illnesses ranging from skin irritation and respiratory illnesses, and have been linked to cancer.

Mayet says that the long-term risk to all South African citizens who are not in the agricultural space is exposure through food that has pesticides, and from water sources. This alarm has been sounded for more than two decades and is part of the reason why Acbio created the database.

“They also made a 2010 policy where they outlined the objective of the government to phase out 116 highly hazardous pesticides and reform the legislation. Nothing happened after that, and nothing happens no matter how much you knock at the door of the registrar.

“So, the frustration on the part of the researchers also had to be captured and recorded, and to illustrate the extent of the research actually published in the country and to put it all in one place and then to categorise it accordingly so that people could easily research it and then also provide a list of highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) that are still in use in South Africa and banned in the EU,” Mayet said.

“…it’s just a resource that we put in the public domain that we hope to be a living document. We also email the compendium to every researcher to ask them if they have any other research in the offing that they would like to bring to our attention so that we may upload it. We would like this to be a living document,” Mayet said.

Acbio recommended that SA urgently needed to develop a comprehensive pesticide action plan, which should “be aligned with international best practices, phase out or ban the most hazardous pesticides and outline a clear roadmap for supporting farmers to transition out of industrial chemical-based food, fibre, and crop production systems to systems that are grounded in agroecological principles, social justice, equity and job creation.” 

Terbufos 

In June, the South African government officially banned the importation and use of Terbufos, commonly known as Halephirimi. This came after children died from food poisoning in Soweto last year. These deaths were linked to food contaminated with the toxic pesticide, classified as an organophosphate.

This came after an investigation by the inter-ministerial committee on food-borne illnesses, which focused on the dangers of organophosphate pesticides.

This unfortunate incident brought the dangers of pesticides to the public’s attention.

Mayet said this showed the significance of activism and consumer knowledge.

“I think that the Terbufos case was the one case that put the issue of pesticides on the national agenda for the first time, and I think that it only did that because a lot of us made such a big issue of it.

“You would remember that the initial responses were very much to blame spaza shops, to underplay it, not to blame it on pesticides, but on food contamination.

“It’s because we made a huge big issue of the fact that it was a harmful chemical, an HHP, a 1A highly toxic chemical, and that we also had a pesticide tribunal, people’s tribunal; we had judges giving evidence to the portfolio committee,” said Mayet.

Funding

Although Mayet acknowledges the steps taken so far to educate people on food safety after the death of children in Soweto, she says education on the extent of pesticide exposure people face daily is lacking.

Organisations such as Acbio do some of that work, but she says funding is limited, therefore limiting advocacy efforts on both consumer education and policy lobbying.

“I do believe that there’s very little public awareness of the extent to which, first, that there are pesticides in the food that we’re consuming, and that there’s no testing by the government of food that South Africans are consuming.” 

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Acbio and Women on Farms have an upcoming documentary after testing food products they bought from a supermarket in South Africa for pesticides. 

“They all exceeded the maximum residue level[s] set by our government. So, our food is laden with agrochemicals. The public has no idea.”

Mayet says the solution is a massive consumer campaign, campaigning for the labelling of foods, and forcing the government to test and inform the public on what pesticides are in foods. 

“It does beg for a consumer campaign, but we don’t have strong consumer civil society groups in the country ready to take up this issue. So, we can’t do it because we’re too small, and we don’t have enough resources.

It’s a time of tightening of belts, and a lot of European donors are cutting back.”

In a written response to Daily Maverick, the Department of Agriculture said it participated in several multi-stakeholder forums that dealt with the broader issues of chemical management. The department noted that “the structures that are in place are not sufficient to deal with challenges of unsafe use of pesticides in the country”. 

Asked what it took to ban a pesticide, the department said: “The department’s mandate is to ensure that farmers and the public have access to effective and safe pesticides. The ban is only considered when there is evidence that the risk associated with the pesticide is not manageable. Thus, the department will institute the ban when there is evidence that the costs of using the particular pesticides far exceed the benefits.” DM