Study On Pesticide Use Behavior And Its Health Effect And Intervention Effect Among Farmers In China

As an important input factor in agriculture,pesticide has made great contributions to reducing the yield loss due to crop pests,and safeguarding food security.In recent years,there has been widespread concern about the adverse effects induced by the increasing level of pesticide use.In particular,the health effect of pesticide use on farmers has become a hot research issue.The level of pesticide use in China has been among the highest in the world,and there has been considerable misuse of pesticides.The objective of this paper is to summarize the characteristics and trends of pesticide use behavior,analyze the health effects of pesticide use,and also discuss the effect of behavior intervention on pesticide use among farmers in China,based on the field surveys and health examinations at the farm household level,which may provide the government with some scientific basises for making policies that guide farmers to scientifically and reasonably use pesticides.To meet the above research objective,we conducted a series of field surveys about the basic information,semimonthly follow-up surveys about the detailed information on each pesticide use,as well as two health examinations among 246 randomly selected farmers in Guangdong,Jiangxi and Hebei from 2012 to 2014 in China.Moreover,we also conducted an intervention experiment on pesticide use behavior among these farmers according to the principle of the experimental economics.Firstly,this paper analyzed the characteristics of pesticide use in different regions and on different crops in China,as well as pesticide use behavior to control multiple crop pests among the sample farmers.Secondly,this paper analyzed the effects of pesticides with different chemical structures on the parameters of the complete blood counts,blood chemistry and peripheral nerve conduction using multiple linear regression models.Thirdly,this paper analyzed the impact of the relevant factors on pesticide use and the effect of behavior intervention on pesticide use among the sample farmers using difference-in-differences models.Finally,according to the conclusions above,this paper recommended some polices that induce farmers to scientifically and reasonably use pesticides.The main conclusions in this paper demonstrate that:(1)The level of pesticide use in China has been contineuously increased,and there has been huge differences in pesticide use level among different regions and to different crops.(2)The insecticides accounted for the largest proportion among the sample farmers,which was followed by herbicides and fungicides.Among the non-herbicide pesticides,organophosphorus and organonitrogen pesticides were more used than the other pesticides.Moreover,the amount of low toxic pesticides used by these farmers was larger than that of high toxic ones.More importantly,farmers overused pesticides to control some pests,while obviously undersed pesticides to control the other ones.(3)The health effects of different types of pesticides were different.Glyphosate would not induce obvious damages to human health in general,while other herbicides would increase the risks of hematological system damages,renal function impairment and the loss of folic acid.Organosulfur,organophosphorus and organonitrogen pesticides would damage farmers' hepatic function,and the latter two would also obviously damage the peripheral nerve conduction among farmers.(4)The information feedback of health effects associated with pesticide application,gender,age,the ratio of off-farm labors,cropping structure and crop pest risk are crucial factors determining farmers' pesticide use behavior.However,the purely behavior intervention on farmers' pesticide use induces no signigicant effect on farmers' pesticide use behavior and the reduction of pesticide use on the condition of the current agricultural extension system.Based on the above conclusions,this paper recommends some policy suggestions:(1)Subject to the current agricultural production technologies,the government should strengthen and promote the development of low or slight toxic pesticide types to replace those high toxic ones.(2)It is urgent to strengthen the monitoring on nationally pesticide use and pest occurrence via the establishment of the relevant monitoring system so as to provice the invidualized information of crop pest prevention and reduce the misjudgement of crop pest risks.(3)The government should establish the mechanism of farmers' health monitoring and training to ensure that the farmers not only obtain timely information of the associations between pesticide use and human health,but also increase their modern agricultural production awareness to improve their health level.(3)It is also urgent to push the comprehensive reform of the current “top-down” agricultural extension system in China,and strengthen the supply-side reform on agricultural extension services.