Morogoro, On the fourth day of a week-long training programme running from 2 to 7 August 2026 at the Tea Board pavilion during Nane Nane (Agricultural Show 88) in Morogoro, farmers, livestock keepers, fishers and district agricultural officers from across Tanzania’s Eastern Zone gathered for two back-to-back sessions: one on the safe use of pesticides, delivered by the Tanzania Plant Health and Pesticides Authority (TPHPA), and a second on managing hazardous agricultural waste, delivered by AGCOT Centre Limited in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The trainings were organised by the Nane Nane Kanda ya Mashariki (Eastern Zone) Preparatory Committee, which coordinates the show across Morogoro, Dar es Salaam, Pwani and Tanga regions, working with AGCOT and IUCN as technical partners. Both sessions were livestreamed, with organisers directing attendees to a QR code linking to the show’s YouTube channel so that farmers anywhere in Tanzania could follow the full week’s training after the fact.

Why this training, and why now

Tanzania’s agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors sit at the centre of the national economy — contributing an estimated 65 percent to GDP while employing roughly 80 percent of the population, against a backdrop of more than 60 million people, over 2,810 rivers and six nationally significant wetland systems. The country has also committed, through national and international agreements, to protecting these resources: some 40 percent of its land area falls under wildlife and biodiversity conservation.

Both trainers made the same point from different angles: the tools farmers rely on to protect their harvests — pesticides — can just as easily undermine the resource base and public health that agriculture depends on, if used or discarded carelessly. TPHPA framed this as a human-health issue; AGCOT and IUCN framed it as an environmental and land-health issue. Together, the two sessions gave the Nane Nane audience a full picture: how to use agrochemicals correctly, and what to do with them once the job is done.

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Session one: TPHPA on correct pesticide use

TPHPA — formerly known as TPRI, and formally the Tanzania Plant Health and Pesticides Authority — sent a four-person team to Morogoro: officers introduced themselves in turn, including Annie Stanford and Heri Kateme (the latter based at TPHPA’s Dar es Salaam port inspection office) and Alis Mapunda from the Arusha office. The team explained that every pesticide sold legally in Tanzania passes through TPHPA registration — laboratory testing followed by field trials to confirm that a product actually controls the pest it claims to.

Their core message was structured around four practical steps: correctly identify the pest or problem before buying anything; choose the registered product — bearing the TPHPA mark — that matches that specific problem; select the right nozzle and sprayer for the job; and, critically, apply it at the right time.

Personal protective equipment was demonstrated on stage: coveralls, gumboots, an apron, goggles and heavy-duty chemical-resistant gloves, all sourced from ordinary agro-input shops. The officers stressed reading the label in full — dilution rates, compatibility warnings against mixing with fertiliser or other chemicals, and, above all, the pre-harvest interval (PHI), the number of days a farmer must wait after spraying before harvesting or selling produce. Ignoring the PHI, they warned, is one of the most common — and most consequential — mistakes: residues that should have broken down are instead carried into food, with long-term health effects including cancer risk building up over years of low-level exposure.

On nozzle choice, TPHPA explained that fine, mist-like droplets (produced by a standard four-hole or “fan” nozzle) are correct for insects, because small droplets adhere to leaf surfaces — top and underside — for longer. Herbicide application needs the opposite: larger droplets from a different nozzle type, delivered at higher pressure, since weeds need to be thoroughly wetted rather than misted. Farmers were advised to insist on receiving at least four nozzle types with any new sprayer, since agro-dealers often sell only one and treat the rest as unnecessary “spares.”

Timing matters on two fronts. Spraying at midday, when temperatures are highest, causes rapid evaporation, wasting much of the chemical before it reaches the target pest. Early morning or evening spraying, besides being more effective, also reduces harm to beneficial insects (which are typically dormant or settling at those hours) and to nearby communities, since wind speeds are lower.

TPHPA also placed chemical control in a wider toolkit, alongside four other recognised approaches: biological control (introducing organisms that prey on a specific pest — the officers cited insects used against carrot weed in northern Tanzania); cultural control (field sanitation, removing diseased plant material, timely planting to avoid the conditions that let pests build up); and repellent planting (chilli, marigold and similar species that deter pests by scent). The combination of all these methods is what agronomists call Integrated Pest Management (IPM) — and TPHPA was explicit that registering and regulating chemical pesticides does not mean discouraging these alternatives; the goal is to reduce reliance on chemicals, not eliminate expertise about them.

A frank exchange with the floor

The question-and-answer session that followed was pointed. Several extension officers pressed TPHPA on reach: Msafiri Mohamed, an agricultural officer from Kisarawe district, and Rubeni Msaki, of the Nafaka Kilimo organisation based in Malinyi, both said that TPHPA’s training rarely reaches district or village level, leaving farmers who most need this knowledge without it. TPHPA acknowledged the gap directly, explaining that budget constraints had historically limited it to regional-level engagement, but that in recent years it has begun rotating zonal trainings — this year’s rotation covering Tanga, Morogoro, Pwani and Dar es Salaam — while working through district agricultural officers to extend reach further.

The most striking intervention came from Mr Msaki, who described discovering a pesticide container at an agro-input shop with a relabelled expiry sticker — the original manufacturer’s expiry date, scratched to reveal “October 2024,” had been covered with a false sticker reading “November [2026].” He reported it to the local government agricultural officer, and the matter was escalated to the district authority, which confirmed it had opened a case against the seller. He pressed TPHPA to investigate further up the supply chain — to the distributors, not only the retail agro-dealers — since sellers often receive advance warning of inspections and hide expired stock. TPHPA’s response was direct: pesticides entering Tanzania cannot legally be registered with a near-term expiry date, and any expired product — regardless of whether it still appears to work — should not be sold or used; inspectors do carry out follow-up compliance checks, and the case Mr Msaki raised would fall under that enforcement.

Other questions covered rodent and small-mammal control (TPHPA noted these fall under a dedicated pest-control unit based in Morogoro, and that certain species, including bird pests like the red-billed quelea, are protected by wildlife law and must be managed through non-lethal deterrents), and pesticide labels printed only in foreign languages — a real barrier, participants noted, for farmers who cannot read the safety instructions or expiry information at all.

Session two: AGCOT and IUCN on hazardous agricultural waste

The second session shifted from application to disposal. AGCOT presented what it called the IGG Guideline (Mwongozo wa IGG) — a national framework for inclusive, sustainable agriculture co-developed under AGCOT’s partnership with IUCN, and formally coordinated under Tanzania’s Office of the Vice President, which holds overall responsibility for environmental policy.

The guideline groups agribusiness actors into four categories — small-scale producers, medium/large-scale producers, small-scale processors, and medium/large-scale processors (the threshold for the latter is capital of TZS 200 million) — and structures compliance around three pillars: inclusive community welfare (worth 30 of 100 possible points), sustainable business practice (30 points), and sustainable environmental management (40 points). Each pillar carries specific, self-assessed criteria — for example, whether workers have formal contracts, whether gender equity policies exist, and whether occupational safety standards (referenced against OSHA requirements) are met. Investors score themselves against an Excel-based tool, and AGCOT — as the coordinating “ubia” (partnership) secretariat — reviews submissions through a dedicated compliance committee, supporting investors to close identified gaps rather than simply flagging failures.

The presenter linked the guideline directly to the day’s core concern: the safe collection and storage of empty pesticide containers, which are classified as hazardous waste. He described widespread, dangerous practices — containers discarded in fields, dumped into water sources, or repurposed by households to store salt, sugar, milk or drinking water — despite pesticide residue in a container remaining hazardous for up to 25 years, even after washing.

To address this, AGCOT and its partners have built vizimba (secure, fenced collection cages) at multiple sites in the Kilombero Valley, including at facilities used by 17 sugarcane AMCOS (agricultural marketing cooperative societies) and at the Itete rice irrigation scheme in Malinyi district, developed in partnership with the local farmers’ cooperative there. The cages can be built cheaply from locally available materials — brick, timber or other structures — provided they follow guidance ensuring surrounding land and biodiversity are protected. A demonstration cage was also on display at the Nane Nane grounds in Morogoro, alongside printed guides and QR-linked digital copies of the IGG Guideline for attendees to take away.

What happens after collection — an honest gap acknowledged

Pressed by an attendee on where the collected waste ultimately goes once a cage fills up, AGCOT did not claim the problem was solved. Tanzanian environmental law technically requires used containers to be returned to the manufacturer, but the presenter acknowledged this is largely unworkable given how many pesticides are imported from distant markets such as China and India. As an interim measure, the National Environment Management Council (NEMC) — referred to in the session by its Kiswahili short form, “Nemki” — coordinates with local government authorities to connect farmer groups with private operators willing to collect filled containers once volumes are large enough, for reuse in manufacturing products such as wastewater pipes. A longer-term solution — a dedicated processing plant or facility for hazardous agricultural waste — remains at the government planning stage.

A second attendee raised the same concern Mr Msaki had raised in the earlier session: that vizimba so far exist only in parts of Morogoro region, with entire districts and villages still lacking any facility, while empty containers continue to circulate near water sources elsewhere. AGCOT’s response named the constraint plainly — funding and phased rollout, starting with high-usage cooperatives in Kilombero — while pointing to the Vice President’s Office’s stated intention this year to push the guideline’s implementation down to local government level nationally, so that district authorities themselves take responsibility for extending the vizimba network.

What this means going forward

Between them, the two sessions offered Nane Nane 2026 attendees in Morogoro a complete before-and-after picture of pesticide risk: correct selection, protective equipment and timing at the point of use; and secure, community-level collection at the point of disposal, tied to a national accountability framework — the IGG Guideline — that is meant to hold producers, processors and, eventually, local government jointly responsible for environmental outcomes.

Both AGCOT and TPHPA were clear that neither problem — misuse or improper disposal — is primarily a failure of the products themselves, but of practices around them, and both pointed to concrete, if partial, fixes already under way: zonal training rotations, an active TPHPA compliance and inspection function, a working vizimba network in Kilombero Valley, and a national guideline now moving toward district-level enforcement. The gaps raised from the floor — training that has not reached most villages, vizimba absent from most districts, and no permanent disposal solution beyond an interim recycling arrangement — were acknowledged rather than deflected, and organisers pointed attendees toward both agencies’ exhibition stands for further, one-on-one guidance during the remainder of Nane Nane week.