Effects Of Educational Workshops On Farmers’ Pest Management Training Needs

Abstract

The heavy use of pesticides in Iran not only has critically harmful health effects on the farmers, but also harms the environment and consumer’s health. One of the best approaches for overcoming this problem can be adoption of pest management practices and IPM (integrated pest management) systems by farmers. Farmers’ pest management training needs has been considered, as prerequisites to IPM adoption. In Iran the most prevalent training method for training farmers in different fields such as IPM is extension education workshops. The main purpose of this study was to investigate and to compare workshop effect on farmer’s pest management training needs. A survey was conducted among 90 farmers inKaraj County that included 30 workshop participants, 30 farmers who had exposed to workshop participants, and 30 randomly selected farmers. A questionnaire to assess pest management competencies were designed. Data were collected through structured interviews with respondents at their farms. The study found that training needs ranking among threegroups was different. For example top three training needs of workshop participants, non workshop participants and control group were: biological control for pests, identification of various types of insect damage, recognition of major crop diseases versus knowledge of pest control options, knowledge of IPM and biological control for pests and versus identify application times frequency, method and amount, awareness of different pesticides and pesticide safety, respectively.