Use of Chemical Pesticides in Vegetable Farming Creates Loss of Environment and Occupational Hazard to the Farmers -Finally Destroying Biodiversity Scenario of the Region

A large portions of Indian population are involved in agriculture. This paper attempts to realize the farmers' awareness and perceptions of pests and pesticide use mainly in few winter vegetable cultivation and examines the pesticide use practices and the intensity of pesticide use in selected winter vegetable cultivation. The farmers who cultivate cabbage, cauliflower, Tomato in the survey area use a large number of pesticides to protect the crop and good yield. They are largely exposed to a large number of health problems directly and indirectly. The result shows that on an average only 22 per cent of the farmers were aware about pesticide exposures in winter vegetable cultivation. Most of the farmers alleged that frequency of insects (85.5%) and disease (83.5%) infestation has increased over the past 20 years. Our survey shows that farmers have not followed acceptable safety measures at the time of pesticide application. The high pesticide use cost was observed in vegetables especially in tomato and it is a great concern that most of the pesticides are marked to high and moderate risk chemicals. This paper aims to study the health hazards faced by the farmers and to provide proper suggestions so that minimum damage is caused to the farmers, environment, Biodiversity scenario of the locality and maximum appreciable yield is obtained. Increasing farmers’ awareness of pesticide hazards to the environment and support of alternative pest management technique such as use of bio-pesticides and IPM is essential on an urgent basis for reducing unwanted outcome on environment and Biodiversity of the locality.