Farmers’ understanding on pesticide safety labels in Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

ABSTRACTPesticides aim to control pests and weeds and constitute an important input when producing a crop. A key source of information for pesticide use is the label on the pesticide container; however, there is little data on whether farmers in Southern Ethiopia’s Wolaita Zone actually use this information. To investigate small-scale farmers’ knowledge of pesticide labels, a survey was conducted in two districts of the Wolaita Zone. The majority of farmers (75.6%) stated that they had not bought pesticides in the original, informational packaging. 95.5% of farmers who bought pesticides with labels (24.4%) read the labels before using the product. One-fourth of the respondents (25.6%) said they typically trust development agents, whereas a significant portion of farmers (32.2%) said they mostly rely on information on pesticides from farmers who have experience. The survey found that, with an overall knowledge index of 0.29, the majority of farmers in the study area had low levels of awareness about the information contained on pesticide labels. The knowledge index values generally ranged from 0.16 to 0.62. Awareness creation training is vital for the farmers that used pesticides as one important input for their production besides the development agents should get intensive capacity development training to have a positive effect on farmers’ competence concerning pest management practices.

Keywords

• Attitude
• knowledge index
• label
• pesticides