Research On Influencing Factors Of Pesticide Application Effectiveness, Efficiency And Environmental Risk Based On Farmers’ Behaviors

The use of chemical pesticides has played an irreplaceable role in recovering loss ofagricultural output damaged by pests, improving quality and commercial value ofagricultural products, guaranteeing supply of agricultural products and social stability,and other aspects. But there are many problems during the course of using pesticideswhich mainly include efficiency and effect of use of pesticides, and impact onenvironment.Presently, there are a lot of research concerning use effect of pesticides and productvalue of marginal factors, but there exists a large deviation between results of empiricalresearch and the theory of profit maximization which was mainly caused by defects ofempirical models. Existing pesticides production functions all have neglected lowefficiency of use of pesticides which was generated by drift and evaporation of pesticidesand other factors. Because different individual farmer unit has different pesticide useefficiency and this individual difference of productivity can result in different netmarginal revenue of pesticide among different farmer units, the important premise offormer functions that all farmer units share the same production function is no longervalid, which has resulted in the deviation between empirical results and the theory.Moreover, the existing research failed to research deeply on influence factors, orientation,magnitude and mechanism of unsafe pesticide application behavior and environmentally-unfriendly pesticide application behavior, and farmers pesticide application behaviordifference between different crops (for example food crops and commercial crops).Main purpose of this thesis is to judge empirically whether farmers overusepesticides, discuss deeply various factors that may influence farmers different pesticideapplication behaviors, find from social and economical aspects a microscopic mechanismthat leads to low efficiency and effect of use of pesticides, unsafe pesticide application behavior and environmentally-unfriendly pesticide application behavior by building atheoretical model from a microcosmic aspect, and to provide theoretical basis for thegovernment to make relative policies.This research has assessed quantificationally farmers efficiency of pesticideapplication, the behaviors of unsafe and environmentally-unfriendly using pesticide byindex system and using home investigation as the main method; has analyzedproductivity of pesticide and judged whether farmers had overuse pesticides on crops byadopting Multiple Linear Equation and Damage Control Production Equation; hasestimated parameter variance according to different crop models and judged farmersdifference of pesticide application behavior.Main conclusions of this research are:(1) To eye from the macro background, currently our country still has manyproblems in terms of pesticide management; the organization pattern of pest control isbeing transformed from decentralized management pattern into unifiedprevention-and-unified-treatment-donated pattern; chemical prevention will still be putfirst in a short time in technical methods of pest control; both area and intensity of pestdamage continue to show an upward tendency and at the same time intensity of pestcontrol is increasing endlessly which makes the job of pest control become difficultconstantly. As the area of pest damage increases quickly, pressure of chemical preventioncorrespondingly also increase constantly, so it is very important to research onmechanism of improving use efficiency of chemical pesticide from the view of farmersmicro behaviors for constructing resource-saving and environment-friendlyagriculture.(2) Looking from laws, regulations and management of pesticides, presently ourcountry s management system is not sound that there are conflicts between relative laws,regulations, policies of pesticides and other laws and regulations, and needs furtherimproving.Specially, pesticide production and operation account system, sales operationpermit system, administration traceability system and use license system for highly toxicpesticides should be established, and the threshold for market entry of productioncompanies should be raised.(3) Different farmer unit has different efficiency of pesticide application, thusefficient amount of pesticide application is not the same as the total amount of pesticideapplication. By analyzing the relationship between farmers pest target characteristics, crop target characteristics, climate conditions, conditions of plant protection equipmentand the effect of pesticide application, efficiency of farmers pesticide application can bepreliminarily assessed. Results of assessment show that efficiency of sample farmerspesticide application is very low on the whole and the average efficiency only reaches61.01which means the farmers just know a little common sense about pesticideapplication. This research finding indicates that if farmers have the behavior of puttingexcessive amount of pesticides, it is caused to a great extent by their lack of concernedknowledge and use of outdated technical equipment, instead of their intention. In order tochange the status of excessive pesticide, propaganda and training should be strengthenedto improve their technology efficiency.(4) Those previous research showed that there existed the condition that farmershave behavior of putting excessive pesticides and their net marginal income of pesticidewas less than0, and regarded that farmers pesticide application behaviors were notrational. But those researches did not consider the condition that each farmer unit has adifferent production frontier. Taking the condition that each farmer unit has a differentefficiency of pesticide application into consideration, behavior of farmers are found to berational. Their production status is standing in the production frontier under theirtechnical level, most farmer units net marginal income of pesticide is near0, and input ofpesticide elements approaches0under their technical level. All the above indicate thatfarmers pursue maximum profit under restriction of each kind of condition.(5) Farmers pesticide application behaviors leading to environmental risk may bedivided into unsafe pesticide application behavior directing at pesticide users andenvironmentally-unfriendly pesticide application behavior directing at the environmentexcept the pesticide user(including non-target organism, water, air, etc.), and influencingfactors and mechanism of the both behaviors are different. Unsafe pesticide applicationbehavior is a kind of internal pesticide application behavior which is mainly resulted bypesticide users insufficient knowledge of safety issues, and strengthening training andimproving quality of human resources should be proceeded firstly.Environmentally-unfriendly pesticide application behavior is a kind of external pesticideapplication behavior which is tragedy of the commons problem mainly resulted by lackof supervision, and to transform the external cost to the internal cost by perfecting lawsand regulations and strengthening supervision is needed. Compared to theenvironmental risk problem during the course of pesticide application, farmers focus more on their own body safety.(6) Large-scale pest control service organizations have higher technologicalpesticide spraying equipment than small-scale farmers do, thus thy have higher useefficiency of pesticides, and at the same time they pay more attention to environmentalrisk problems, so construction of a professional control service system is an importantmicrocosmic path to solve the problems concerning use effect, use efficiency andenvironmental risk of pesticide application.Main academic value of the research is that it points out that to judge whether acertain production element is excessively used or not can not be judged by one sameproduction frontier, but should be judged by the production frontier where the microindividual actually stands because there lies difference between individual technicalefficiencies, and the way to improve use efficiency of production elements is to changethe production frontier by propaganda, training and by adopting new technologies or toencourage micro-organizations of high element use efficiency to come into being.