Assessing the Overuse and Health Costs of Pesticide Use in Crop Cultivation: Findings from a Micro-level Study

Abstract

Pesticides are widely used in agricultural production to prevent and control pests, diseases, weeds, and other plant pathogens to reduce or eliminate yield losses and maintain high product quality. Chemical pesticides can cause undesirable effects on human health and also to the environment because of misuse that concerned with its overuse and exposure to human health and environment. This paper made an attempt to examine the current pesticide use practices for agriculture in Keraniganj Upazilla of Dhaka district in Bangladesh. It analyzed the overuse of pesticide and short-term health costs of pesticide exposure using primary data purposively collected from 60 farmers from the study area. It found that the farmers used 21479.4 grams of extra pesticides commonly used in Bangladesh than the recommended amounts that should be used for the 5 different types of crops: boro paddy, cauliflower, potato, eggplant, red leaf vegetable, and gourd leaf vegetable for per acre of land. This generates an additional production cost of Tk.65,640.07 per acre in each growing season. Using the cost of illness (COI) method it is founded that the average health cost generated from pesticide application was estimated to be Tk.284.09 for one incidence of pesticide use related health problem. About 3.3% of the pesticide applicators were found to face breathing problem, 10% faced skin diseases, 13.3% diarrhea, 8.3% eye irritation and 18.3% headache because of pesticide pollution. It is also understood that 88.3% of the surveyed farmers were unaware about the side-effects of pesticide use, while 98.3% applicators did not use any special dress or personal protective equipment (PPE) and 61.7% used no mask during pesticide application in their crop fields. It is also found that there is an absence of bio-pesticide use in the study area. Based on the study findings this paper indicates that there is a need for rigorous training and knowledge sharing efforts among the pesticide applicators in the study area as well as in the entire country. Policy makers and the Agriculture Extension Department (AED) thus are particularly expected to address the issue with utmost importance to ensure proper use of pesticides for agriculture in the country.