EU blocks on Kenya’s green beans stay at record levels, misinformation blamed
5 min read
By Antynet Ford
Green bean farmers racing to control critical pests in widening pesticide bans triggered 30 EU export interceptions for pesticide residues in 2025, compared with 31 a year earlier, with agronomists citing a lack of understanding of the rules and chemicals as the cause of the ongoing record levels.
Across all fresh exports, a drive by the Kenya Plant and Health inspectorate Service (KePHIS) to ensure exporters meet the EU’s zero-tolerance Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) cut the country’s MRL-triggered interceptions by 25 per cent, from 44 in 2024, to 33 in 2025..
But an analysis of data from the European Union’s phytosanitary records by FarmBizAfrica found green bean export notifications, which have long counted for the majority of the country’s MRL notifications, remained almost unchanged in volume, as farmers moved from one problematic pest control product to several others.
The biggest problem in 2024 was the use of acephate, which helps reduce aphids and whiteflies, but was mainly being used by green bean farmers to prevent thrips that are among the crop’s most destructive pest.
Acephate was the cause of over half of Kenya’s green bean notifications in 2024, but was banned by the Kenyan government from January 2025. This brought the acephate-related interceptions down to just 4 in 2025, with the last one reported in August last year, from 16 a year earlier.
However, as acephate interceptions tumbled, other new chemicals appeared for the first time. Some of these, such as bifenthrin, were used as new solutions to controlling thrips as acephate disappeared. But there was also a ballooning in new fungicide interceptions.
These were driven by the banning of chlorothalonil, which was able to control a wide range of fungal diseases as one product, the weaker insect control and consequently rising vector-borne diseases on abandoning acephate, and more humid conditions in 2025.
“As insects cause more plant damage, fungal diseases tend to get worse too, and these also rise in wetter conditions,” an agronomist explained to FarmBizAfrica.
The EU system is also more sensitive to green bean infractions than any other fresh produce from the country. Since 2020, green beans have been subject to additional controls, with 10 per cent of export consignments inspected by the EU, where other Kenyan vegetables have no special controls.
Nonetheless, other crops, capsicums, basil, tea, snap peas, and chillies accounted for 13 interceptions in 2024. But, in 2025, the notifications for other crops fell sharply, to just three notifications for chillies, coffee and snow peas.
The problem for green bean farmers is the lack of correct information as they change products due to new bans, said agronomist and farmer Beatrice Mwende.
“Farmers are not getting the right information on the usage of these chemicals. You will get especially on PHI (pre-harvest intervals) that a farmer is not told the correct information. For example, if you are dealing with a crop that belongs to a different family. A good example a pesticide that may be for three days on a crop that’s not beans, but may be taking seven days for green beans. A farmer may not know that different crop families detoxify differently for different molecules.
“The second thing is they rely on buying the chemicals from agrovets and there is no fresher training for some, if not all, agrovets attendants. Some of them do not even do know how the plants detoxify,” she said.
“You will also get that some of them are not aware of the molecules banned in different markets, like Europe, for example.”
“They are always there for business and profit. Even me, when I go get the pesticides, I’ll always tease them by asking the number of days it will take to detoxify and most of the times you’ll notice that they answer the number of days without even knowing what crop is going to be sprayed or even the pests. Other times, they’ll ask which pesticide you want and you’ll say, for example, for thrips and they will give you one that has overstayed on the shelves and say it’s a three-day pesticide even without knowing the crops I will be spraying,” she said.
“My advice to exporters is that if you have contracted farmers, have a session with them and train them on the risks of MRL interceptions. Share with them that after the tracing is done and it’s found the affected crops came from their farm, it would be them who will pay for the consequences,” she said.
As the rules stand, once an export is notified, exporters are not allowed to export again without a rigorous series of checks during a period of suspension. This stops exporters buying for many months and sees them, typically, exclude the supplier who triggered the notification.
“If we can have a fresher training for agrovets attendants, it will save farmers a lot because some of the farmers are devoted but do not know how to interpret the pesticide instructions,” said Beatrice.
“Farmers also get ignorant of the requirements and when they get a buyer even when the sprayed the crops recently and they are yet to detoxify, they’ll just harvest for sale because they do not want to miss the market. For example, a farmer has their green beans mature and they have been longing for a buyer. If an exporter comes with good money and they just sprayed the beans, they will not care because at the back of the mind they ask ‘where will I get such a huge sum and I have stayed for long without a buyer?’. The greediness by some farmers has cost the exporters a lot and that is what has also caused an increase in the green bean MRL interceptions.”
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“The other thing is exporters getting into the export business without following the set protocols. If you are exporting sugar snap, snow peas etc, you have to undergo a food safety audit by KePHIS. But some of the exporters after they get the licences, they bypass that, and it is when that KePHIS realises later that so and so is exporting, for example, beans and has not been having the safety audits. That is then when they start sending threat emails of cancelling the export license or lock the account because you did not follow the right procedure.”
“Generally, creating awareness is the core of it all,” she said.
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