Abstract:
Agriculture is one of the most important activities in the world and agrochemicals play vital role in this sector. Lot of detrimental effects is occurred due to the lack of knowledge about scientific usage of agrochemicals. Up country area was selected as subject area. In the sample, 75% of the agrochemical users were found as fulitime farmers and they have high educational level. 41% of agrochemical users were falling into the seasonal income level of less than Rs. 50,000. Most of agrochemical users ware cap when they handle the agrochemicals and 7% of farmers didn't use any safety accessories during the period of agrochemicals usage. 44 farmers were disagreeing and 29 farmers were strongly disagreeing with safety practices needed in fertilizer applications. 43% of them in the sample throw the empty containers to anywhere near to the field and 25% of agrochemical users buried the empty containers but they don't use lm depth for burring those things. 30.07% of the use of safety practices is explained by the explanatory variables in the function. Increment of knowledge about safety precautions needed before the agrochemical application, during the application and after application has significant gffect for increase the farmer's decision toward the use of proper safety measures in agrochemical applications. As farming areas such as Bandarawela and Welimada area has significant effect on farmer's decision to make use of proper safety measures in agrochemical applications. Therefore, giving proper knowledge related with safety usage of agrochemical for farmers in these areas is most effective to increase the use of safety proper safety measures in agrochemical application.
Keywords: Agrochemicals, Agrochemical users, Safety, Measures
