No abstract

Environmental management of pesticide consumption is one of the most important aspects of pest management programs. The present study was carried out considering the farmers' knowledge, attitudes and practices of pest management in rice paddies in four Iranian cities: Sari, Babol, Amol and Nour in Mazandaran province, which are the highest rice-cultivating regions. The effective factors in pesticide consumption management are education, pesticide application technology, regulations, Integrated Pest Management implementation and the price of pesticides; therefore, a questionnaire with 27 items regarding these factors was designed and 220 farmers were interviewed. The obtained data were converted to quantitative measures by the Likert procedure and then analyzed by descriptive statistical methods. In order to evaluate the current status of pesticide environmental management, the quantitative information was categorized into five levels: very poor, poor, medium, good and excellent, based on the Food and Agricultural Organization and Iran Plant Protection Organization index. The weakness of the education parameter in studied samples was one of the most significant results of this research. The total education score was 1.9, which is very poor. The study demonstrated that the existing regulations have many deficiencies in comparison with the standards. The 48% overall management rank was considered poor. In 35%, the pest management rank was medium and in 17%, the rank was very poor. No good or excellent rank was obtained in this research. Hence, a comprehensive practical program needs to be initiated to improve the present status of pesticide consumption management in the province. The results achieved in this study may be used as a database to establish a management and monitoring program for pesticide consumption environmental management in Mazandaran province.