Abstract
The pesticide sale promotion in local area According to the National Health Assembly held in 2003, pesticide advertising and sale promotion control were raised, among participants, as significant policy implications to relief pesticide problem in Thailand. These concerns emerged when it was found that pesticide advertising and sale promotion with various techniques have influenced the attitude, belief and practice on the pesticide use among farmers. In addition, the monitoring and control mechanism related to these two issues by public agencies at local scale was weak in terms of vague regulation and shortage of capital, qualified staff and essential information. Under this situation, the study on the pesticide sale promotion in the local area became an urgent task. This study would provide evidence based information which strengthened the movement of National Health Assembly in monitoring and urging local government to take better action in controlling the pesticide advertising and sale promotion control in their responsible areas. This study was conducted, during June until September 2004, in four provinces Nan, Kampaengphet, Suphanburi and Khonkaen, with aims to investigate the pattern and techniques of pesticide advertising and sale promotion in the sample sites as well as mechanisms in controlling and monitoring these two issues. The policy implications were the expected outcomes. Various techniques in the quality research were applied during the step of data collection such as documentary and field survey, observation, focus group, group interview and in-depth interview of key informants (pesticide vendors, farmers, communal leader and relevant public officials). Based on both primary and secondary data, the knowledge found in 4 provinces was synthesized and then presented through the seminar held for receiving the feedback and comments from experts and relevant organizations. With regard to the results, it was found that the farmers in all four provinces intensively used the pesticide for their agricultural practices. The agro-chemical shops were prevailing at all local administrative units (province, district, sub-district and village). The key actors in distributing the pesticide to the local farmers comprised of sale men, pesticide vendors, agro-chemical shop, agricultural cooperative, traders and retail shop. The popular techniques to increase the sale volume among pesticide producers, trading agencies, salesmen and vendors were price cut, road show, demonstration, premium, sweepstake, contest, commission, price rewards, tour reward in Thailand and international countries, bonus, party and seminar, score collection reward, credit, sale in packages and training. The model of sale promotion at local areas was a mix model. Although, the techniques to promote the pesticide use were variety, they were differentiated by the positions of pesticide supplier and the purchasing patterns. For example, salesmen and retail shop mainly focused on the direct sale while, contract farming could be observed as one of techniques by agricultural cooperative. In addition, the sale representatives and key vendors were recognized as the target groups of pesticide production companies. These companies would support their sale representatives by running sale promotion campaigns with specific farmers. However, the sale representatives in the local areas had to conduct sale promotion campaigns in parallel but they mostly dealt with small vendors and local farmers. Another interesting finding was that advertising through mass media was a key channel to serve the sale promotion campaigns. In conclusion, the model to promote the pesticide use in local areas were 1) Sale representative based promotion 2) Customer based promotion 3) Sale force based promotion The factors leading to the uncontrolled pesticide advertising and sale promotion in local areas consisted of 1) lack of stringent implementation and enforcement by relevant public agencies in controlling the pesticide advertising and sale promotion 2) high preference, among most of farmers, to get free rewards, cheap pesticide and quick returns from agricultural practices but low education about the danger of the pesticides 3) many trading names (grouping in the same general name) leading to the confusion among the farmers 4) high concern on economic profit rather than others observed among pesticide trading agencies 5) pro-pesticide policy or regulation of agricultural cooperative in forms of loan for pesticide 6) high competition for the market share among the production companies
