Iranian Journal of

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Background and Objective: Chemical pesticides are considered a vital component of farming and play a substantial role in maintaining high agricultural productivity. Concerns regarding the health and environmental effects of the pesticides have been increased in recent years. Therefore, this research aimed to assess farmers’ awareness about the positive and negative impacts of pesticides and their health risk on human.

Materials and Methods: A survey study was carried out between two groups of farmers including chemical pesticide users (n= 126) and biological pesticide users (n = 98). The users were randomly selected from 20 villages. The studied villages were selected from two sub-districts by cluster sampling method. An expert-verified questionnaire that its design and contents were assessed by local professionals was used in this research. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed based on the calculated Cronbach Alpha Coefficient for two constructs of awareness: positive (0.75) and negative (0.83) impacts of pesticides.

Results: Results indicated that the farmers using biological control were well aware of the harmful impacts of pesticide and hence they used less pesticides than the chemical pesticide users. Although the two groups of the farmers highlighted the health impacts of chemical pesticides such as human and animal health threat, and pollution of surface and underground water, the users of biological control methods had more concerns in this regards. Most of the respondents stated that the pesticides caused serious health problems such as exhaustion, sweating, cough and headache, dizziness, skin inflammation and irritation, nausea and vomiting.

Conclusion: Even though the farmers were well aware of the impacts of pesticides use, they have less often used personal protective equipment. In order to promote farmers’ awareness of pesticide impacts, more efforts are needed to strengthen training programs and facilitate access to extension services.

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Background and Objective: Farmers in agricultural activities deal with various forms of chemical pesticides and thus their knowledge level can have a positive or negative impact on the food health of a community and the environment. Understanding their knowledge about the consequences of poisoning will provide an effective extension for promoting environmentally friendly methods in farms and maintaining food security. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the farmers' knowledge of Moghan plain about the consequences of chemical pesticides use for community health, the environment and food security in 2017.
Materials and Methods: The method of this study is descriptive and survey. The statistical population consisted of all farmers (water cultivation) in the Moghan plain. The sample size of 400 was determined by multi-stage sampling method and using Kerjesi and Morgan table (1970). The study tool was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by a panel of experts and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient.
Results: The findings showed that the majority of the farmers had relatively poor knowledge about the consequences of using chemical pesticides. The results of structural equation modeling (using Lisrel software) showed that the use of information resources, in total, predicted 24% of variance of farmers' knowledge about the consequences of chemical pesticides.
Conclusion: Given that more favorable safety behavior and cultivation of more healthy crops are based on the farmers' knowledge about the use and consequences of chemical pesticides, hence, the attention of authorities and planners for conducting various workshops in line with farmers' perceptions about the use of knowledge and the consequences chemical pesticides are needed.