The bloc’s Chemical Agency had classified the fungicide as a carcinogen, meaning it causes cancer, and ruled it unsafe for use.

Three years later, in Kosovo, seven euros will buy a farmer enough Daconil for 10 litres of irrigation water, according to the findings of a BIRN investigation, even though the country removed it from its list of approved pesticides.

Agricultural pharmacies approached by this reporter said they could provide Daconil within days, even sending photos via Facebook as proof.

A Facebook chat between an agricultural pharmacy and BIRN journalists

Coupled with a lack of proper guidance for farmers on how to use pesticides safely and shortcomings in how authorities monitor them, experts say consumers are being put at risk.

“Farmers in Kosovo need professional agricultural advice,” said Tahir Tahiri, chairman of the Kosovo Farmers’ Union Federation, “but unfortunately no one offers this advice, not from the local level nor from the level of the central institutions.”

‘Selling Daconil is illegal’

Kosovo’s Ministry of Agriculture removed Daconil from its list of approved pesticides in late 2018 following the European Commission’s decision.

EU member states were given until November 2019 to withdraw authorisations for plant protection products containing chlorothalonil as an active substance.

Aspiring to one day join the EU, Kosovo generally tries to harmonise its laws and regulations with the bloc’s own. Yet while it acted on Daconil, another pesticide that was removed from the EU’s approved list in August 2019, Triadimenol, marketed as Falcon, remains on Kosovo’s list of pesticides approved for use.

Drita Zogaj, a doctor at Kosovo’s National Institute of Public Health, said pesticides in general can be highly toxic. The effects of low doses are not always immediately visible, but exposure over time can cause severe illness.

“Long-term exposure to pesticides has been linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease, asthma, depression and anxiety, attention deficit disorder; as well as cancer, including leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Zogaj told BIRN.

Lack of advice, failure to follow instructions

Besides the pesticides being used, there are concerns too over how farmers in Kosovo are using them.

Experts say farmers are largely on their own when it comes to deciding how to utilise them on their crops, crucially in what quantities, when, and where.

Tahiri said that most pesticides in Kosovo are of poor quality and farmers end up using more than they should to get the desired effect.

“For this reason, a pesticide that should be used 2-3 times is sometimes used more than ten times,” he said. “It certainly has an impact on crops.”

Arben Mehmeti, associate professor at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Pristina, said overuse posed a health risk to consumers.

“If, for example, we treat a cabbage or a tomato, we need to know when that product will be harvested,” he said. “Suppose they were harvested within the withdrawal period. In that case, the consumer could have acute and chronic poisoning because the human body may accumulate certain amounts of pesticides left in the product.”

The withdrawal period is the minimum time between using the pesticide and harvesting the crop.

Large farms follow the timeline, Mehmeti told BIRN. But some farmers are not sufficiently well-informed.

An additional problem is the fact Kosovo does not provide farmers with an updated list of harmful plant organisms, so-called HPOs, that pesticides can be deployed against, said Mehmeti. The ministry has such a list, but it is dated 2013 and has not been updated since.

“If we don’t know which HPOs should be controlled in the field, we might use an inadequate and therefore ineffective pesticide,” said Mehmeti.

Accounts of pesticide misuse

According to official data, pesticides were used on 122,090 hectares, 29 per cent of all cultivated land in Kosovo in 2020, roughly on a par with previous years.

BIRN has been told of pesticide misuse.

A farmer in the southern region of Suva Reka/Suhareka, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told BIRN: “Sometimes we don’t use them according to the instructions, or when we use them at high temperatures they don’t have the expected effect.”

This was confirmed by the owner of an agricultural pharmacy in Suva Reka/Suhareka, who said farmers often ignored instructions and advice.

“I tell them that at 25 degrees the plants should not be sprayed with pesticides,” he said, also on condition of anonymity. But then a farmer will spray his crops “at a temperature of 28 to 30 degrees, and he comes and tells me, “the pesticide had no effect.””

Ilir Bytyqi, another farmer in the same region, said he always consults agronomists on how to use pesticides properly.

“I have never damaged my plants with pesticides,” he said. “If it happened to others, it was because they didn’t know how to use them.”

Photo: BIRN/Besnik Boletini

Farmers in Kosovo do not need to be certified or registered in order to buy pesticides, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development, MAFRD, told BIRN.

Agricultural pharmacies, however, do need a licence to operate, and, according to MAFRD, must employ an agronomist who has the right to sell pesticides and an obligation to advise farmers on their use.

Concerning Daconil, it is the responsibility of the Food and Veterinary Agency, FVA, to monitor the market and take appropriate measures in cases when illegal pesticides are being sold.

Between 2017 and 2020, the FVA initiated 149 legal proceedings against pharmacies that did not meet the rules but it does not have a breakdown of the specific violations and was unable to tell BIRN what the results were.

The FVA told BIRN it had not registered a single case in 2020-2021 in which pesticides had been detected “above the allowed norms.”

In terms of agricultural products, samples are taken only after the products have been put on market. However, between 2017 and 2020, 147 samples were taken in the field but none showed illegal levels of pesticides. There are question marks, however, over the effectiveness of the FVA’s inspections.

In a report published in December in 2019, Kosovo’s National Audit Office, KNAO, said that the FVA “still does not have a fully functional safety system across the entire food chain.”

This research was realised within the Summer School for Investigative Journalism 2021 organised by BIRN.