Study On Factors Affecting Farmers′ Perception Of Pesticide Residues

The maximum limits of pesticide residues in agricultural products is one of the most important international technical barriers to trades (TBT). It is the main technical tools to protect trades between countries, which also shows the technological progress and human civilization progress. Since China becomes a member of WTO, about 90% of Chinese agricultural products exports suffer from the impact of technical trade measures, which accounting for more than 50% of total losses of six major export industries caused by TBT. In the new century, the rates of our agricultural exports in foreign trade exports decline year by year, and since 2003, Chinese agricultural export trades have maintained a pattern of deficit. The formation of this pattern is a result of balance on domestic agricultural products demands, however, undeniably, it is also an important reason that the amount of pesticide residues exceeds maximum limits standard, and the foreign technical trade barrier is difficult to be crossed. The safe quality of export-agricultural products not just influences Chinese international image of export trade, but also is far-reaching to expand the employment and income of farmers, as well as promote transformation of agricultural production. Therefore, it is imminent to enhance the safe quality of export-agricultural products.While the formation of pesticide residues is closely related to the pesticide quality and characteristics itself, it also has a direct relationship with farmer′pesticide residues perception and the resulting pesticide application behavior. Under the current technical conditions, it is an effective way to understand the laws of pesticide residues and standard farmers′pesticides application behaviors. Therefore, it is a critical research project to explore farmer′pesticide residues perception and its impacting factors, and seek for the measures to reduce pesticide residues level, and supply safe agricultural producets.This article takes 241 scattered rural households as a case, and introduces structural equation model to domestic research area. Profound analysis of farmer′pesticide residues perception and its impacting factors are made, and there are many significant conclusions:(1) scattered farmers, the main body who apply pesticides, show complex features on perception of pesticide residues. Statistical analysis showes that farmers′perception levers on the safety interval are high, while the perception levels on the content of pesticide residues are low. The results also show that the majority of farmers have not received training in basic knowledge of pesticides, they accumulate techniques of pesticide application mainly by the production experiences .It is the different individual spraying experiences that lead to vastly different perceptions on pesticide residues.(2) farmers in different regions show large differences on the cognitive level of pesticide residues. Overall pattern is that awareness on pesticide residues of farmers decreases gradually from the southern, central to northern regions, and the trend is in line with the economic and social development levels of the three regions(3) the paper applys the structural equation model to analyze the impacting factors of farmer′pesticide residues perception. The results show that farmers′own characters, pesticide training and awareness on food safety have significant positive effects on the awareness of armer′pesticide residues perception,what′more, the role from large to small is: farmer′own characteristics factors, pesticide training factors, and awareness of food safety . Specifically, seven factors such as region, sex, age, education years, pesticide training, concerns on the self-grow-food security and whether eating self-grow food or not all have effects on scattered farmers′pesticide residues perception.