FARMERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS USE OF PESTICIDES

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to assess farmers’ attitude towards use of pesticides and also to explore the relationships between nine selected characteristics of the farmers’ with their attitude towards use of pesticides. Data were collected from 100 randomly selected farmers out of 500 farmers of Boliardi and Arha village under Bajitpur upazila during March to April 2006, through personal interview. Simple and direct questions with different scales were used to obtain information. Co-efficient of correlation (r) was computed in order to explore the relationships between the attitude towards use of pesticides of farmers and their nine selected characteristics. Seventy seven percent of the respondents had moderately favourable attitude, 10 percent had slightly favourable attitude and 13 percent had high favourable attitude towards use of pesticides. The correlation test showed that farm size and annual income had positive significant relationship; education, extension contact, organizational participation and knowledge on pesticides had negative significant relationship while age, family size, and training experience had no significant relationship with the farmers’ attitude towards the use of pesticides.