Farmers’ perspectives on pesticide usage in vegetable production in selected agricultural zones in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

Pesticide usage is an essential part of modern farming and its indiscriminate use poses a significant health risk to humans and the environment. This study aimed to investigate the perspectives of vegetable farmers on pesticide usage, attitude in handling, storage, use of personal protective equipment, and health symptoms they experienced. This investigation was conducted in some selected areas of the three agricultural zones of Lagos State (Far Eastern, Eastern and Western zones) using structured questionnaire. A total of 350 farmers provided adequate information needed for this study. Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis. Most of the farmers have some level of formal education (85.4 %) while 14.29 % have no education. The majority (96.86%) of farmers agreed to the use of various pesticides ranging from chemical to botanical. Most of the respondents stored their pesticides in their tool shed while 14 % stored their pesticides in their homes of residence. The  respondents adopted unsafe practices such as littering their farm sites (11.14%), and burning of empty containers on-farm (14.29 %), while 3.43% reused empty pesticide containers. The majority of the farmers used personal protective equipment (81.70 %), though not appropriately. As a result, 13.14 % of the farmers experienced more than one health symptoms after pesticide application. Despite the level of the respondents’ formal education, 38.57 % were not trained. To limit the risk associated with the use of pesticides, it is important that adequate and comprehensive training on safe farm practices be given to farmers by the government.