Awareness and Adoption of Paddy Farmers in Buttala Sri Lanka to Golden Rules of Pesticide Usage

Abstract

Pesticides are widely used in agricultural production to prevent or control pests, diseases,weeds and other plant pathogens in an effort to reduce or eliminate yield losses and maintainhigh produce quality. There is a higher risk in pesticide usage due to hazardous nature ofthem; hence, safety measures should have practiced to minimize the threats. Especially inPaddy cultivation, various types of pesticides were applied during its various growing stagesas from the seedling to harvest. The objective of the study was to investigate the awarenessand adoption on “Golden Rules” which are (1) exercise caution at all times (2) carefulreading and understanding of label before use (3) practicing good personal hygiene (4) takecare of and maintain application equipment and (5) wear appropriate personal protectiveclothing and equipment, in the area of Buttala, Sri Lanka at three levels as “High””Moderate” and “Low”. A field survey which based on pre tested questionnaire was carriedout by using randomly selected 50 Paddy farmers without considering their age classes,education and economic status etc. to find out the awareness and adoption to “Golden Rules”in five operations (in the operations of pesticide buying, transportation, storage, applicationand disposal). Survey results revealed that the farmers of Buttala did not aware on “Goldenrules” and their adherence to “Golden Rules” is not satisfactory. Moreover, “Moderate” levelof awareness and adoption on the processes of buying (52, 48%) and storage (51, 52%) but“Low” awareness and adoption on transportation (51, 52%), application (48, 48%) anddisposal (52%, 50%) seen from total number of farmers (n=50). The risk of contaminationwas high due to careless transportation, application and disposal because of “Low” awarenessand adoption for those processes therefore immediate awareness programs are required.According to survey findings the pesticides were applied heavily because of the lack ofknowledge and elevated pest and disease problems, therefore there was a threat toenvironment mainly from application and disposal by contaminating water sources of thearea. Promoting of extension services, farmer credit facilities to buy safe equipments,directing farmers towards integrated pest management and activate regulations on pesticideusage are needed to protect public from hazardous agrochemicals. Furthermore, this is amatter of concern to overcome the hazardous problem of pesticides use before it isecologically and socially getting worst in the future.