Conceptions of employees on the use of pesticides in irrigation projects, Lagoa da Confusão – to, Brazil

Abstract

In the region of Lagoa da Confusão - Tocantins is common to develop large areas of planting soybeans, rice, beans , watermelon and corn throughout the year , alternating crops according to the prevailing season. In order to understand the perception of farmers regarding ecological concepts that produced from a common practice used, nine were interviewed farmers responsible for irrigation projects , where he sought to know which characteristics of the work performed by them . The methodology used to develop the research was oral history of agricultural producers, which is a very modern resort used for preparation of documents, files and studies of social experience of individuals and groups (Meihy, 2002). Oral history interviews with people using previously selected from a list of questions related to the topic discussed, as well as recording the speeches. For making the series of interviews was used open and closed questions characterized as mixed or semi - structured interview (Campos, 2004). During the interviews it was noted reliance on pesticides for good crop yields, resulting in uncertainties and contradictions between verbal discourse and actual practice in agricultural projects. Analysis of the questionnaires was by basic statistics, using computer graphics. Data were analyzed from spreadsheets with square matrix format, with the cases and variables arranged in rows and columns (Arango, 2005). From the analysis of the results it was noted that the difficulty for the protection of natural ecosystems is the differences in concepts about the values and importance among individuals of different cultures that play different roles in the environments , adopted by farmers on the needs of each individual to production and hence income generation.