Factors determining pesticide use practices by farmers in the Sultanate of Oman

Abstract

In a study of pesticide use on farms in Oman, over 200 respondents were surveyed from amongst owners of and workers on farms that belonged to a Farmers' Association (FA) and those that did not belong to the FA. A questionnaire was used to gauge attitudes to pesticide use whilst inventories of active ingredients were taken for all farms. The age profiles of the respondents were broadly similar, as was the distribution of nationalities amongst the workers. Workers and owners of FA farms were better educated than respondents from non-member farms. A majority of non-FA farm workers reported that they always used pesticides, fewer FA member farm workers and non-FA farm owners reported this behaviour with FA owners showing the lowest proportion of respondents who always used pesticides. Responses amongst farm owners to questions about frequency of pesticide use suggested that this was unaffected by age or education status, but for farm workers younger or less well educated respondents were more likely to respond by indicating that pesticides were always used. When asked to rate pesticides on a scale of 1 (bad) to 10 (good), high responses were most frequent amongst non-FA farm workers followed by FA member farm workers and non-FA farm owners. On average FA farm owners had the lowest average response, and responses by all groups were unaffected by age or education status. Prohibited pesticide use was higher on non-FA farms (4.9% of all pesticides) than on FA farms (1.3%). Pesticide products observed on FA member farms generally contained newer classes of active ingredients and were most frequently from major manufacturing companies in Europe, North America and Japan. Older, off-patent active ingredient-containing products were frequently observed on non-FA farms, often from so-called ‘me-too’ producing companies in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.