Social Service In Plant Protection:from The Perspective Of Farmer’s Behavior In Pesticide Application

Plant protection is an important part of the plant production system. It is the safeguard for high productivity, good quality and healthy ecology. In China, pest prevention and integrated management are the main police of plant protection, with public service" and pollution-free as its main targets. Currently, pesticide application is the main and well mastered practice of plant protection by farmers. For low-input, small scaled farmers, plant protection is heavily relied on services provided by public domains such as local governments. This project uses farmers’ behavior of pesticide application Zhangzhou city, Fujian province as the starting point to study the current status and problems of public services in plant protection. Results from this project could be used as a guide to improve social service systems in plant protection.Farmers’ behavior of pesticide application in Zhangzhou city, Fujian province is investigated through personal interviews with local farmers, governmental officers, the agricultural technicians and pesticide operators. It is found that the majority of agricultural practices currently in the region are elders, and low-educated farmers using low production technology. They mainly plant high value cash crops. Though small scales the economic return is not low. For most farmers, their goal of plant protection is to eliminate diseases. In addition, they do not have an appropriate knowledge of pesticide practices including the times, doses and types of pesticide applications and apply pesticides with humble equipments whenever a disease is detected in the fields or follow other farmer action. They also do not understand the basic features of the pesticides they apply and negative impacts or poisons of pesticides on human, livestock and environments. Overall, the farmer’s practices in plant protection in Zhangzhou city is less rationale and do not fit well to the national policy focusing on pest prevention and integrated management as well as the concept of pollution-free. In conclusion, it is not realistic to achieve scientific basis of plant protection in this region through changing population and education structures of agricultural practices in farming.Social services in plant protection are provided by profit or non-profit institutions (or organizations) such as agricultural departments in governments, the farmers’ crop associations (or professional cooperatives), pesticide companies and professional group of plant protection. In this project, the current status of the social services in plant protection and demands of farmers and local agricultural governments for the services were also surveyed. It is found that the social services have played some role in increased farmer’s knowledge of plant protection, particularly in farmer’s practices in pesticide applications. However, due to small scale production and the service only covering a small portion of crops planted in this area farmer benefit from this type of service is limit. Obviously, social service of plant protection in Zhangzhou does not meet its demands and requires a substantial improvement.From the survey results, it is believed that social services would be an effective way to solve the current problems of plant protection faced in Zhangzhou. Here, solutions of promoting the development of social service in plant protection are discussed; the goals of social service in plant protection are proposed. To improve agricultural production in this area, it is necessary to establish multilateral cooperation in social service of plant protection technology socialized service organizations and extend the service to the all steps of plant production. The recommendations on how to support the social service in plant protection by government, local officers, agriculture technology department, crop associations and farmers are presented.