Assessment of Farmers' Understanding of the Information Displayed on Pesticide Product labels in Ilorin Metropolis of Kwara State

Abstract

This paper assesses farmers' understanding of the information displayed on pesticides product labels in Ilorin metropolis of Kwara State. Data were obtained using structured questionnaire. A random sampling was employed for selecting 86 respondents representing 20% of the total 430 registered members of farmers association of Nigeria in the metropolis. Descriptive statistics were used as analytical tools. The result shows that majority of the farmers were male and ranges between 31 to 50 years of age. The farmers were literate with majority having secondary education and also with 6 to 10 years experience in pesticides usage and farming. The study further revealed that despite high literacy level among farmers in Ilorin metropolis of Kwara state and widespread experiences in the use of pesticides, majority do not understand the information displayed on pesticide product label. The results showed the information displayed on pesticide product label was not effective in the sense that the farmers do not read the labels let alone understood it .They however preferred the information given by their colleagues. Majority of the farmers keep the pesticides inside their houses, prepare it on the field and discard the empty packages into forest. Most of the farmers know about Dichloro-diphenyl trichloro ethane as the only banned pesticide in circulation. The major problems facing the farmers with regards to understanding pesticide labels are that languages used are mostly technical and foreign. It was suggested that pictorial demonstration and bold images should be used since what is seen are easy understood.

Keywords: information displayed, pesticides and product labels,