Vegetables growers causes of aberrations from proper chemical pesticides use in Nadia district of West Bengal

Plant protection is an exercise basically followed in any crop for control of insect-pests, diseases, weeds etc. to avoid economic losses. Farmers who are cultivating vegetables, they are using maximum numbers and amount of pesticides compared to cereal crops per unit area. For proper application of pesticides –there are specific recommendations. Due to lack of awareness of farmers regarding those recommendations, they are using pesticides deviating its proper processes and considerations. As a result, they are facing health related problems. Keeping all these in view the present study was designed to identify the aberrations from proper chemical pesticide use by the vegetable growers and reasons behind it. The present study was conducted in Nadia district of West Bengal. Nadia district was purposively selected for the study and Chakdah community development block of Kalyani sub division was randomly selected for the study. Rautari gram panchayat was selected randomly from all the gram panchayats of Chakdah community development block. Three villages namely Teghara, Ruppur and Rameswarpur was selected purposively as the villages were in close proximity. Complete enumeration of the farmers in the villages was attended. Farmers who were available up to three times were included in the sample. In this way 73 brinjal growers from Teghara, 62 pointed gourd growers from Ruppur and 69 cauliflower growers from Rameswarpur were selected for the study who grow crops in parcels of plots under bigger common field. The farmers’ major aberrations from safe pesticide handling and safety measures taken were the followings-(1) 19.60% respondents sometimes and 47.05% respondents never read the label of pesticide carefully before using pesticides (2) 53.92% of respondents were not aware of the classification of pesticides based on toxicity (3) At the most 86.76% and 90.68% of respondents did not use gloves or mask respectively while applying pesticides (4) 13.72% vegetable growers mixed pesticides with bare hand (5) 35.29% of respondents used soap water and 64.70% used plain water while washing hands after pesticide application (6) 3.92% of respondents always and 19.60% sometimes took food or smoke immediately after pesticide application. The major reasons behind farmer’s aberrations from proper pesticide handling and usage were (1) lack of knowledge of the farmers regarding proper pesticide handling and use. (2) lower level of education (3) non availability of training regarding safe use of pesticides was another important reason behind the problem(4) reasons included lack of credit to arrange precautions(5) lack of availability of safety inputs. To avoid the unnecessary use of pesticides, regulations regarding the use or pesticides and proper verification of the procedure should be carried out. Creation of awareness on the basis of family based training, sensitization through value and ethics based capacity building and utilization of religious and community leaders in this regard may be useful to overcome the issue. Various deviations from safe usage and handling of chemical pesticides were identified in the study. So, steps should be taken to change the perception of the vegetable growers regarding the use of the safety measures. Therefore, the base level extension agencies should take proper measures on the basis of findings of the study to make their further extension programme more effective.