Commercializing Agriculture in Africa: The Environmental, Health and Safety Implications and the Way Forward

Commercialization of agriculture in is a worthy effort in attaining food sufficiency in Africa. However, this needed quest has had an enormous environmental, health and safety implications for the agricultural sector of the continent. This quest has led to intense use of machinery, agrochemicals and other non-environmental friendly methods of farming. This implies there will be greater chances of farm accidents, mishap, fatality, production loss time and other burdens on farmer’s wellbeing on one hand and loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation, and unsustainable use of land all leading to climate change on the other hand. Holistically, due to the modus operandi of agricultural work, the workers are exposed to hazard ranging from; chemical, physical, ergonomics, biological and psychosocial hazards thereby leading to disorders and diseases like carcinogenicity (cancer causing), mutagenicity (induce mutations), tetragenicity (affect the feotus), psychiatric disorder and delayed neuropathy (dysfunction of peripheral nerves), and the dusts have been known to cause diseases ranging from byssinosis (lung diseases), occupational asthma, pneumonitis (inflammation o the walls of alveoli) and non-specific chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and agriculturally related musculoskeletal disorder. Notwithstanding, a well implemented farm safety programme with massive awareness, more sustainable, environmental friendly method such as conservation agriculture and integration of environmental health impact assessments into African agriculture, research and development on commercialization of agriculture, are workable solutions to the likely health, safety and environmental challenges from the commercialization process.