While the survey supports the observation that only few farmers
rely on extension personnel for knowledge of pest management and
the decision to apply pesticides, it also demonstrated that farmers
who seek advice from extension personnel apply less pesticides than
other farmers (Table 7). Farmers who have access to extension support
are more knowledgeable about pesticides and alternative methods of
pest control, thus are less receptive to using pesticides (Timprasert et
al., 2014). Similarly, pesticide training, IPMtraining, farming experience
and education were also negatively related to pesticide use intensity in
our study, meaning that well-educated and experienced farmers,
farmers with training in IPM and pesticide safe use and handling practices
are less likely to overuse pesticides. These farmers are more likely
to knowthe technical information that is necessary to use pesticides effectively,
and are more likely to use alternativemethods of pest control,
such as IPM(Damalas and Hashemi, 2010; Shetty et al., 2010). Likewise,
they aremore likely to be aware of pesticide-related adverse health and
environmental effects (Hashemi et al., 2012).