Small-holders manage around 500 million small farms, mostly in developing countries. We conducted surveys of safe use practice among 8500 smallholders from 26 countries and for 6300, assessed any associated health effects that they experienced. In the Colombian Andes, we explored farmer's perceptions of their risks using a Structured Mental Model Approach. This showed a difference in indigenous small-holders' value systems from that which was assumed by local and international experts and we were able to align our future trainings with these values. In Kenya, we surveyed farmer safe-use practices, trained them independently, re-assessed them after training and again a year later, in order to understand how well key messages were retained. Analyses of these observations have been incorporated into the worldwide delivery of our trainings in order to make them more effective and to support our goal of providing effective safe use training to 20 million small-holders by 2020.

Perceptions and realities in small-holder pesticide safety-training from Africa to the Andes

248th National Meeting (2014)

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