By Kiarie Irene Wambui and Beatrice Kivindyo
NAIROBI, Sept. 23, 2026 – A pesticide withdrawn from use in one country is not necessarily “banned” everywhere, yet the distinction can have real consequences for Kenyan farmers and exporters, agricultural sector players have warned.
The warning emerged during a media engagement convened by the Kenya Editors Guild and aak-GROW at Serena Hotel in Nairobi, where journalists and agricultural stakeholders discussed pesticide regulation, crop protection, food safety and the challenges of reporting on an increasingly technical area of agriculture.
For farmers, the confusion can affect what products they use to control pests. For exporters, it can determine whether their produce is accepted in overseas markets. And for journalists, poor information can quickly turn a technical regulatory issue into a misleading headline. aak-GROW CEO Joel Mutai said journalists and the public need to be more careful with the word “ban”.
“The word ‘ban’ matters. A withdrawal of use in one country is not necessarily a global ban,” Mutai said. Each country sets its own regulatory standards, meaning that a pesticide permitted for use in Kenya may face restrictions in an export destination. Under the European Union’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), for example, produce treated with a pesticide that is legal in Kenya can be rejected if the destination market does not permit its use.
That distinction is particularly important for a country whose agricultural sector depends heavily on access to export markets. Mutai said one of the biggest challenges facing agricultural reporting is not necessarily a lack of information, but the difficulty journalists face in accessing and interpreting technical data. “The biggest issue that has come through very clearly is access to data and information. We need to work together to close that gap,” he said.
He urged journalists to engage agricultural experts and regulatory institutions before publishing stories involving pesticides, pest outbreaks or changes in regulation. “We want to break the gap between data and the media. Scientists may think in terms of facts, but there is a way that information needs to be communicated,” Mutai said. He encouraged journalists to approach industry experts when they need clarification rather than relying on information circulating online.
A trained youth in every village?
The information challenge is not limited to newsrooms. Farmers themselves must make decisions about which products to use, how to apply them and what precautions to take. aak-GROW Product Stewardship Manager Benson Ngigi said the industry is increasingly looking at trained youth as a way of improving pesticide application at farm level.
Instead of expecting every farmer to acquire specialised knowledge and protective equipment, the model involves training spray service providers who can offer the service to several farmers. “One trained spray service provider can serve up to 30 farmers. Those farmers don’t all need to buy personal protective equipment or mix pesticides themselves,” Ngigi said.
Kenya currently has 2,790 active Spray Service Providers across 18 counties, while more than 4,000 people have been trained under the programme, according to Ngigi. aak-GROW is also working to connect farmers with spray service providers through a digital application. The approach is intended to improve responsible pesticide use while creating an income opportunity for trained young people in rural communities.
But training farmers remains important, Ngigi said, particularly because pesticides are only one part of a broader crop-protection system.
Agriculture story, business story or science story?
The discussion also highlighted a challenge facing newsrooms: agricultural stories often fall between traditional reporting beats. A story about pesticides can simultaneously involve agriculture, science, business, trade, public health, the environment and food safety. Kenya Editors Guild chief executive officer Linda Bach challenged editors to look beyond crises and ask what important agricultural stories are being missed.
For a sector that directly contributes about 22.5 per cent of Kenya’s GDP and supports more than 40 per cent of the country’s workforce, the consequences of getting those stories wrong can extend well beyond the newsroom. In rural areas, more than 70 per cent of people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, according to figures presented at the meeting.
For farmers, reliable information can determine what they spray on their crops, how they respond to a pest outbreak and whether their produce can access a particular market. For journalists, the challenge is similar: establish what the evidence says before turning a regulatory change, scientific finding or pest alert into a public warning.
The meeting’s central message was therefore less about pesticides themselves than about information, who has it, who can access it, and whether the people making decisions with it can understand what it actually means.
