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From the Farmers’ Perspective: Pesticide Use and Pest Control

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Integrated Pest Management

Abstract

Many studies have shown that farmers in developing countries often overuse pesticides and do not adopt safety practices. Policies and interventions to promote a safer use of pesticides are often based on a limited understanding of the farmers’ own perspective of pesticide use. This often results in ineffective policies and the persistence of significant pesticide-related health and environmental problems, especially in developing countries. This chapter explores potentials and limitations of different approaches to study pesticide use in agriculture from the farmers’ perspective. In contrast to the reductionist and mono-disciplinary approaches often adopted, this chapter calls for integrative methodological approaches to provide a realistic and thorough understanding of the farmers’ perspective on pesticide use and illustrates the added value of such an approach with three case studies of pesticide use in Iran, India, and Colombia.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Hossein Heidari, senior researcher at the Biological Control Research Department, Iranian Plant Pests and Diseases Research Institute, for providing us with some information needed for the case study “Pesticide use and IPM in Iran,” funded by Tehran University Research Division. The research presented in the case study “Pesticide use in the Colombian Andes” was carried out within the project “Reducing human health and environmental risks from pesticide use: Integrating decision-making with spatially-explicit risk assessment models. The case of Vereda La Hoya, Colombia” led by Prof. C. R. Binder at the University of Zurich, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, College of Agriculture, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran

    Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi

  2. Division of Agricultural Extension Education, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Jammu, 180 009, Chatha, Jammu, India

    Rajinder Peshin

  3. Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Giuseppe Feola

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  1. Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi
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  2. Rajinder Peshin
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  3. Giuseppe Feola
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Correspondence to Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Entomology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

    David Pimentel

  2. FOA Chatha Div. Agricultural Extension Education, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology, Jammu, India

    Rajinder Peshin

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Hashemi, S., Peshin, R., Feola, G. (2014). From the Farmers’ Perspective: Pesticide Use and Pest Control. In: Pimentel, D., Peshin, R. (eds) Integrated Pest Management. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7796-5_17

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