IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v28y2011i2p167-177.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Weed control practices on Costa Rican coffee farms: is herbicide use necessary for small-scale producers?

Author

Listed:
  • Angelina Bellamy

Abstract

This paper presents research conducted during two coffee farming seasons in Costa Rica. The study examined coffee farmers’ weed management practices and is presented in the form of a case study of small-scale farmers’ use of labor and herbicides in weed management practices. Over 200 structured interviews were conducted with coffee farmers concerning their use of hired labor and family labor, weed management activities, support services, and expectations about the future of their coffee production. ANOVA and regression analyses describe the relationships between farm size, labor, and herbicide use, and three farm types (i.e., conventional, semi-conventional, and organic). Based on findings regarding the amount of labor used to manually control weeds on different types of farms (large farms, small conventional, semi-conventional, and organic farms) I am able to challenge small conventional farmers’ perceived need for herbicide use. Semi-structured interviews of coffee farmers and extension workers further revealed a dominant role played by agro-chemical companies in assisting farmers with production problems, and documented a high transaction cost for information provided from elsewhere. Chemical companies hire extension workers to visit farmers at their farms, free of charge, to offer recommendations on how to treat different pest problems, while government and cooperative extension agents charge for the service. There is a need to increase the amount of resources available to the National Coffee Institute to fund one-on-one farmer support services in order to balance the influence of agro-chemical company representatives and allow farmers to make better decisions regarding weed management. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Suggested Citation

  • Angelina Bellamy, 2011. "Weed control practices on Costa Rican coffee farms: is herbicide use necessary for small-scale producers?," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(2), pages 167-177, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:28:y:2011:i:2:p:167-177
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-010-9261-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-010-9261-2
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-010-9261-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeffery Bentley & Graham Thiele, 1999. "Bibliography: Farmer knowledge and management of crop disease," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 16(1), pages 75-81, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jill Harrison & Christy Getz, 2015. "Farm size and job quality: mixed-methods studies of hired farm work in California and Wisconsin," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 32(4), pages 617-634, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ajay Kumar & Sushil Kumar & Komal & Nirala Ramchiary & Pardeep Singh, 2021. "Role of Traditional Ethnobotanical Knowledge and Indigenous Communities in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-14, March.
    2. Gabriel Rugalema & Giulia Muir & Kirsten Mathieson & Emily Measures & Friderike Oehler & Libor Stloukal, 2009. "Emerging and re-emerging diseases of agricultural importance: why local perspectives matter," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 1(4), pages 441-455, December.
    3. Wilson, Clevo & Tisdell, Clem, 2001. "Why farmers continue to use pesticides despite environmental, health and sustainability costs," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 449-462, December.
    4. Ayimut Kiros-Meles & Mathew Abang, 2008. "Farmers’ knowledge of crop diseases and control strategies in the Regional State of Tigrai, northern Ethiopia: implications for farmer–researcher collaboration in disease management," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 25(3), pages 433-452, September.
    5. Bhawana Upadhyay & Dharani D. Burra & Than Thi Nguyen & Kris A. G. Wyckhuys, 2020. "Caught off guard: folk knowledge proves deficient when addressing invasive pests in Asian cassava systems," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 425-445, January.
    6. Liu, Elaine M. & Huang, JiKun, 2013. "Risk preferences and pesticide use by cotton farmers in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 202-215.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:28:y:2011:i:2:p:167-177. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.