FARMER ATTITUDES TOWARDS ADOPTION OF SUSTAINABLE PROTECTION TECHNOLOGIES: THE CASE OF INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT IN VEGETABLE CULTIVATIONS IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

This study examines empirically the extent to which vegetable cultivatingfarmers in Sri Lanka are willing to adopt effective, economical andsustainable crop protection technologies such as Integrated Pest Management(lPM) instead of applying solely chemical pesticides to control pests. It usesprimary data collected through a series of personnel interviews with arandomly selected sample of vegetable farmers (n = 100) that practicechemical control measures in the Kurunegala and Puttalam districts in theWayamba Province from May to July in 2005.

The behavioural change in farmer attitudes and perceptions towards adoptionof environmentally-friendly IPM techniques instead of applying chemicals onthe vegetable cultivation on a regular basis were captured by means of twoindexes - Additive Index (AI) and a Multiplicative Index (MI), which usedthe scores given by participants to the survey to a set of attitudinal statements(n = 17) explaining this behaviour on a Likert scale. The outcome of AI andMI were in turn modelled with the farmer's socio economic characteristics,including the age, sex, level of education, income, managerial time,experience in farming, extent of land allocated for cultivation, crop type,availability of credit and extension facilities etc. to test significance of thesefactors on this behaviour. The results suggest that many of these have asignificant impact on the farmer's degree of responsiveness towards adoptionof sustainable agricultural practices. The outcome of analysis highlights theneed of provision of appropriate private and regulatory incentives for farmersto change their behaviour in this respect.