Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy

Steven Haggblade, Amadou Diarra, Amidou Assima, Naman Keita and Abdramane Traoré , 2018.A Preliminary Assessment of Herbicide Quality in Mali in the Presence of Proliferating Unregistered Brands of Glyphosate. Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Paper 93. East Lansing, Michigan State University.

The preliminary analysis reported in this paper suggests that farmers have good reason to complain about the unreliable quality of glyphosate products currently available for sale in Mali. Of the 100 samples tested from four major agricultural markets in Mali, over one-third were either under-dosed or over-dosed. Unregistered products are of lower quality, on average, than duly registered brands. All other factors equal, an unregistered brand is likely to have 16% less active ingredient than registered products. An unregistered salt formulation purchased in the Bamako Central market contains, on average, has half the active ingredient stated on the bottle label. Little wonder farmers complain about variable response rates, even when comparing outcomes from different bottles of the same brand. The widespread availability of unregistered glyphosate products, combined with their highly variable quality, suggests that regulators and farmer advocate organizations will need to patrol markets and enforce regulations far more effectively than they have in the past. The wide margin of error found in these laboratory tests suggests that investments in improved laboratory equipment and processes will be important as part of overall efforts to improve regulatory oversight of herbicides and other pesticides.