Investigation of the Knowledge Levels and Environmental Awareness of Farmers About Pesticide Usage in Antalya

The indiscriminate use of pesticides in agriculture represents a major hazard to the environment and human health. this thesis was conducted to investigate knowledge levels and environmental awareness of farmers in antalya while using and selecting pesticides. number of producers was calculated with “ratio-mean based simple random sampling” method and questionnaires were made with 378 producers. sixty two percent of the producers were primary school graduates, 32.3 % were between 45-54 years of age, 28.8 % of them had a farming experience of 11-20 years. producer awareness levels about pesticide usage were scored with 3 likert scale. the producers had low (13.5 %) , medium (28.3 %) and high (58.2 %) environmental awareness levels. chi-square (x2) independence test was used to investigate the correlations of pesticide usage awareness levels with the age, educational level, land resources and farming experience. significant correlation was observed only with farming experience of the producers. coefficient of contingency was 0.23. close to thirteen percent of the producers didn’t care about the phi, 65.6 % haven’t heard about mrls, 44.4 % disposed surplus of pesticide mixed water to somewhere in the field, 26 % disposed empty pesticide bottles to garbage and 8.5 % disposed to land.