PESTICIDES, PRODUCTIVITY, AND FARMER HEALTH - IMPLICATIONS FOR REGULATORY POLICY AND AGRICULTURAL-RESEARCH

Agricultural pesticides pose health hazards to farm family members and farm workers. Methods for safe storage, handling, and use of pesticides exist to mitigate these hazards and are used in many developed countries. In developing countries, however, techniques for the safe use of agricultural pesticides are far less widespread. The case studies of Ecuador by Crissman and Cole, and of the Philippines by Pingali, Marquez, and Palis show that the use of pesticides is associated with adverse health consequences. The key questions, then, are why pesticides are not used safely in the developing countries, and what actions should be taken to address this problem. The design of effective solutions to this problem will require, first, an understanding of why pesticides are not safely used, and second, reliable estimates of the tradeoffs between health and productivity associated with alternative regulatory regimes or production practices. This paper outlines a conceptual framework that can be used to test behavioral hypotheses and to measure health-productivity tradeoffs, and then discusses how this framework can be used to assess solutions to the pesticide-induced health problems in developing countries.