Pesticide Use in Fruit-Vegetable Production and Awareness Level of Produces in Tokat Province

Abstract

Many studies have revealed that unconscious and intensive use of pesticides causes significant environmental and health problems. In this sense, it is important to investigate the awareness level of pesticide use by producers. The basic material of the study consists of the data obtained from the survey carried out with the farmers producing fruit and vegetables in 10 specified villages in the central county of Tokat province. 110 questionnaires were applied in respect of the production rates of the villages. the data belong to 2017 between October and December. The data obtained from the survey revealed that 97% of the fruit and vegetable producers in Tokat use pesticides but 50% of them have no information about the contents of the pesticides they use. It is observed that they depend on their own experiences (50%) and the recommendations of the pesticide dealers (80%). 55% of the producers stated that the pesticide usage expenditures vary between 2 to 5 thousand Turkish Liras. These expenditure rates, which are quite high in terms of total production cost, shows that pesticides are widely used. Producers state that they use not more than gloves and masks while using pesticides as they accept their unconsciousness of the harms of pesticides to the human and environmental health, whereas they have no opinion about the danger of the residual rates of pesticides on food security. However they indicated that they will not be indifferent to possible informative trainings to be held in their villages or area. In this context, it is necessary to educate producers by experts in raising awareness of them and to ensure the continuity of these educations and to analyze the feedback of the educations by making pesticide residue analyzes.