Perception of Cotton Farmers on the Effects of Pesticide Use

Abstract

Pesticide use is said to have contributed significantly to the food security though, with the decline in crop production and post-harvest losses, there is a growing concern over the ill effect of pesticides on human and animal health, environment, natural resources and sustainability of agriculture production. The farmers in Dharwad district of Karnataka are under the misconception that higher returns could be gained through the use of high doses of pesticides. However, this has resulted in pest resistance, pest resurgence and secondary pest outbreaks in the region over the past few years and farmers are only unaware of short-term ill effects of pesticides. Likert scaling, which is the most widely used psychometric scale in survey research, was used to study the perception of cotton farmers on pesticide use and Chi-square test was done to study the relationship between levels of perception and independent variables.  Almost 90.83 percent respondents felt that the pesticide use effects human health. Approximately, 52.50 percent accepted the fact that pesticide kills other organisms and only 10 percent of the respondents neglected it. When asked further about the loss of biodiversity, soil, air and water contamination, pesticide drift and pest resurgence, the majority of the respondents didn’t know anything about it, i.e. 48.33 percent, 52.50 percent, 60 percent and 55 percent respectively.