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Motivations Behind Farmers, Pesticide Use in Bangladesh Rice Farming

Elizabeth J. Z. Robinson
Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Sumona Rani Das
PROSHIKA, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

This paper addresses the motivations behind farmers' pesticide use in two regions of Bangladesh. The paper considers farmers' knowledge of arthropods and their perceptions about pests and pest damage, and identifies why many farmers do not use recommended pest management practices. We propose that using the novel approach of classifying farmers according to their motivations and constraints rather than observed pesticide use can improve training approaches and increase farmers uptake and retention of more appropriate integrated pest management technologies.

Keywords: Bangladesh, Pest management, Pesticide use, Rice farming, Sustainable agriculture

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Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Knowledge Management

Commodity: Pesticide

Objectives:

The paper analyses farmers' pest management decision making and the implications for future farmer training.

Methodology:

The study was conducted in two selected flood plain areas of Koitta (population 1500) in Manikganj district, and in Gabtali (population 1700) in Bogra district. In these two thanas (administrative units) farmers had been heavily influenced by the non-government organization (NGO) PROSHIKA and other NGOs that promoted sustainable and ecological agriculture and IPM. As a consequence, even farmers who had not attended specific training may have been exposed to such practices and so may not have been be representative of the flood plain farming community at large in areas where training has not been undertaken. In this paper, ‘‘trained’’ farmers are those that received ecological training from PROSHIKA or CARE, both NGOs (though not all were necessarily following all the practices suggested in the training at the time of interview).‘‘Untrained’’ farmers had not received such training.2Over the three years of the project, the methodological approaches taken by the socio-economics team, com-prised of both agricultural and resource economists and a sociologist, were diverse. Individual semi-structured interviews with key informants such as pesticide dealers and government extension officers, combined with farmer focus group discussions, were used during the early part of the project to get a general understanding of pesticide use and pest management decisions. Next, a structured 54-item farmer questionnaire was under taken to obtain quantitative data on farmers perceptions of the effectiveness of pesticide and anticipated yield gaps from not using pesticide. Farmers were asked how badly they perceived pest damage to have been in the most recent boro season compared with other years. They were also asked to provide general perceptions of the number of severe pest damage that they would expect in a ten-year period. They were then asked to provide their perceptions of extent to which they felt that the use of precautionary pesticide and pesticide applied after the damage would improve their yields compared with not using any pesticide; this was asked for years when there were severe, moderate, and mild pest damage. The sample comprised 17 trained farmers and 14 untrained farmers in Gabtoli, and 9 trained and 14 untrained farmers in Koitta. Trained farmers were selected randomly from one village in each of the two than as where ecological training had been undertaken, either by PROSHIKA or CARE. Non-trained farmers were selected randomly from villages nearby to the villages where training had been undertaken. 4Although the sample size was relatively small, the overall objective of the research was to determine different farmer motivations, and norms rather than variation; consequently, this sample size, combined with information from participatory and qualitative approaches, was considered appropriate. The socio-economics team worked closely with the biological scientists on the project in both formulating questions and questionnaires and data collection.In the cropping systems that we studied, rice is grown in two seasons: boro (dry season) and aman (monsoon or rainy season). 5In the boro season, rice is irrigated and generally transplanted. In the aman season, irrigation is not used, and again the rice is transplanted. At Gabtoli, which is situated on medium-high land, vegetables are often grown after the aman rice crop. In other lower-lying fields, only rice is planted. Farmers tend not to use pesticide during the aman season, principally because flooding which harms the crop is common; farmers reported that they do not want to ‘‘waste’’ money spent on pesticide. Hence this paper focuses on pesticide use in the boro season.

Source of Information: Agriculture and Human Values (2007) 24:323–332

Article Link (Online Journal): DOI 10.1007/s10460-007-9071-3

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Achievement/Findings:

Finally, farmers reinterpret training and information given to them about pest management to suit their particular circumstances and their own understanding of a problem. For example, we found that a large number of farmers, despite knowing the recommended dose, did not follow the recommendation. Hence, it is not sufficient to assume that farmers will adopt pest management techniques without adapting them. Pesticide recommendations and pest management techniques therefore need to be resilient to adaptation by farmers, and farmers need to be confident as to why the recommendations are appropriate. Our recommendation is consistent with CARE's Bangladesh INTER FISH project in which the extension agent's role is to facilitate, accompany, and support farmers' processes of learning and problem solving,teaching concepts that farmers can adapt to different realities (Perez,n.d.). Involving farmers more in the development of research activities, both during hypothesis generation and design of fieldwork, should make the re-search findings and recommendations more relevant to the farmers, and the technologies more likely to be adopted.

Knowledge Management: Journal