Almost half of world’s farmers poisoned by pesticides every year, experts find

Study reveals that pesticide poisoning kills 11,000 people each year, with India accounting for nearly 60% of fatalities

Almost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every single year, a study has found.

Using publicly available data from 2006-2023, the study, which was commissioned by Pesticide Action Network , found there to be an estimated 402-433m cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers every year.

Based on a worldwide farming population of 934 million, this means approximately 46% of farmers are being poisoned every year. The greatest estimated number of poisonings was in southern Asia, followed by south-east Asia and east Africa .

The overall highest national incidence of poisoning was in Burkina Faso in west Africa, where nearly 84% of farmers and farm workers were reported to have experienced poisoning.

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health on Wednesday, also found that an estimated 11,000 deaths occur every year due to pesticide poisoning, with nearly 60% of these in India.

Jayakumar Chelaton, the executive director of Pesticide Action Network India , said the research exposed a “crisis that can no longer be ignored”.

The authors of the study are calling for “immediate action”, including the implementation of a UN recommendation to phase out highly hazardous pesticides.

The study states that despite global efforts to highlight the dangers, pesticide use has continued to grow steadily, with 3.8m tonnes used in 2023, a doubling since 1990.

Dr Sheila Willis, the head of international programmes at Pesticide Action Network UK, said: “Now that the scale of suffering has been revealed, farmers must be supported to access safer alternatives to protect their health and that of their families.”

The study did not consider the impact of pesticide exposure on the estimated 84 million children working in agriculture and did not look at the long-term health impacts, with acute pesticide poisoning defined in the study as any illness or health effect experienced a short time after exposure.

Génon Jensen, the executive director of the Health and Environment Alliance, said: “We are extremely concerned about the devastating health impacts from pesticide poisonings – both the acute impacts mentioned in this study but also chronic exposures that farm workers and communities suffer.”

Hélène Nicora, the director general of Parkinson’s Europe, said there was also “overwhelming evidence” to suggest that Parkinson’s was an environmentally driven disease, with growing evidence linking pesticide exposure to the development of Parkinson’s.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder in which parts of the brain become damaged over time, affecting movement and balance. The global burden of the disease is rising, with France, Germany and Italy all recognising it as an occupational disease for farmers .

Farmers and farm workers are mainly exposed to pesticides during preparation and application, as well as when touching treated crops and contaminated equipment or clothing.

Speaking at a webinar organised by Friends of the Earth Europe earlier this year, Rendert Algra said he believed his Parkinson’s disease was linked to the pesticides he had used when working at his family farm in the Netherlands.

“Being the eldest son, I did all the spraying of pesticides in our fields for several years in a row,” he said.

Despite being the most robust study to date, the report highlights that available information on pesticide poisoning is inadequate, with the authors calling for standardised surveillance and reporting protocols so that pesticide-related poisonings become reliable and comparable.