Farmers’ needs for advise appropriate pesticide application from sellers in RoiEt province

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to study the extent of pesticide use by the farmers in Roi Et province, to study the farmer needs of sellers’ advice on safe handling and use of pesticides and to determine the problems and constraints concerning the farmers on the use of pesticides. Data for this study were obtained from the sample of 250 farmers in selected RoiEt province through questionnaire, then were analyzed using Descriptive Statistics. This research findings revealed that the studied farmers were mostly male, married, age of 51-60 years with education of primary school or lower. Their professional experiences were around 31-40 years and their annual household incomes were approximately 20,001-30,000 baht. Most of them were members of Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperative. However, most of them were never been trained on how to use the pesticides safely and received information from various sources including local radio and pesticide stores. Regarding the needs for knowledge and suggestions on pesticide practices from the sellers, it was shown that the farmer needs was described as “medium” level. The highest-level need was the concern of health effects while the high-level were, ranking from the highest, the properties of pesticides, how to observe the symtomps of diseases and pests, and safe handling and use of pesticides, respectively. Such information was preferred to be verbally informed. The problems and contraints found
that the farmers were lack of education, labour and capital.