Farmer's Behavior and Attitude in Using Chemical Fertilizers and Pesticide in Rural Areas

Abstract

Human activates especially farmers can have impacts on the environment via using chemical substances, these effects can be directly on human or indirectly through food, wildlife, climate, crops, or livestock. Chemical substance which are created to introduce into delicately balanced ecosystems, they could have led to damage in motion that reverberates via the food for years. Nevertheless, it wreaks havoc, biodiversity and the natural system that human survival depends on. The aim of this study is to evaluate farmer's behavior in using pesticides and fertilizers to prevent the environment pollution and the harm to the human beings. Primary data was used to achieve the objective which using a semi-structure questionnaire, that administered in a random sampling technique, face to face administration. The total number of farmers in the sample was 200 farmers in 31 villages. The analysis is conducted with SPSS and Excel Spreadsheets. The results illustrated that great number of farmers in rural area of Sulaimani uses chemical pesticides and fertilizers in huge amounts, they still with the adage, "if little is good, a lot more will be better". In addition, the great number of farmers don't follow the product's labels, or believe that these chemical substances impact on the environment, or adopt new techniques in applying chemical substances. So, farmers require knowledge and informations to understand the negative influences of these chemical substances on the biotic and abiotic components of the environment to use organic fertilizers and pesticides instead of toxic chemicals with the recommended standard levels.