FACTORS AFFECTING ADOPTION OF BOTANICAL PESTICIDES IN THAHA MUNICIPALITY OF MAKAWANPUR, NEPAL

This study was conducted in 2017 to analyze the factors affecting the adoption of botanical pesticides inThahaMunicipality, Makwanpur district of Nepal. Thaha Municipality, commercial vegetable production pocket area,was purposively selected for the study.The study area was divided in two clusters, Daman and Palung area. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the 200 samples from both clusters. This research revealed thatabout 40 percent of farmers were found applying botanical pesticides. Adoption of botanical pesticides was used as dependent variable. Age of the household head, gender, location, family size, education, occupation,farming experience, farm income, farm size, and membership in organization were used as independent variables to determine the adoption factors. Binary logistic regression model showedorganizational membership of farmers’ had significant positive effect on adoption of botanical pesticides whereas as primary occupation, and farm size were significantly negative at 5 percent level of significance. Age, gender, location, family size, education, and farming experience have no significant effect on adoption. The study revealed that knowledge gap on preparation and use, tradition of using chemical pesticides, easy availability of chemicals, slow effect of botanicals were the major problems of botanical pesticides adoption, respectively. Study suggests that government agencies, extension and research institution should play a role to strengthen the knowledge and networking of farmers’ through organizational membership to increase adoption of botanical pesticides .