Cotton is a major crop grown on state farms in the Awash Valley in northern Ethiopia, as well as by thousands of smallholders throughout the country. Its conventional reliance on synthetic pesticides has caused serious health and environmental problems, not least in the accumulation of stockpiles of hazardous, obsolete insecticides. The joint national Obsolete Pesticide Project (OPP) by the Ethiopian federal government and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) collected and repacked 1,500 tonnes of outdated and poorly stored pesticides in 2003, which were sent to Europe for disposal. Of these, 10% (150 tonnes) came from only 15 stores in the Awash cotton plantations area.
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