Pesticide Avoidance: Results From a Sri Lankan Study with Health and Environmental Policy Implications

In this paper the contingent valuation method (CVM) is used to elicit bids/values to avoid direct exposure to pesticides and the resulting illnesses among subsistence farmers in a developing country, namely Sri Lanka. Farmers using pesticides on their farms suffer from short-term as well as long-term illnesses. Deaths from direct exposure to pesticides are not uncommon. The CVM is used to determine the yearly value to an average farmer of avoiding the costs of direct exposure to pesticides and to calculate the pesticide cost scenarios for the entire country. The last section of the paper examines the factors that influence the willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid direct exposure to pesticides and the resulting illnesses and discuss the health and environmental policy implications stemming from the regression analysis.

A WTP Model Showing the Relationships Between Three Approaches For Pollution

In this paper, a simple willingness to pay (WTP) model that shows the theoretical relationships among three valuation approaches that can be used to measure changes in health resulting from pollution is developed. The three valuation approaches considered are the contingent valuation (CV), cost of illness (COI) and the defensive behaviour approaches. After showing the relationships between the three valuation approaches, the model demonstrates that the CV approach exceeds the COI and the defensive behaviour approaches. The theoretical results are supported by field survey data. The pollution referred to in this paper is direct exposure to pesticides by farmers during handling and spraying on their farms.

AGSTATS Northern Agricultural Region

This document has been commissioned by the Sustainable Rural Development Program, Northern Agricultural Region as a service to support effective decision making in this region. AGSTATS are a product of the AGPLAN project. Each AGSTAT is a summary sheet for local government areas or regions. Each AGSTAT features: Extensive use of graphs and tables for quick and easy communication of information. A brief commentary on features and trends. The Gross Value of Agricultural Production (GVAP), total area of production and number of farms for the area in comparison with the total region. The proportion ofGVAP by commodity. Trends in total GVAP between 1982 and 1997. The GV AP, total area of production and number of farms for the area compared to other local governments in the region. GVAP, area and dollars per hectare for major agricultural activities in the area in 1996/97 Trends in GVAP for major commodities between 1982 and 1997. These two page sheets provide you with quick and easy information about agricultural production in your area which can help you with planning and decision making. These sheets can be produced and tailored to the needs of the user for a fee

Acoustic suppression of the coffee-ring effect

We study the influence of acoustic fields on the evaporative self-assembly of solute particles suspended inside sessile droplets of complex fluids. The self-assembly process often results in an undesirable ring-like heterogeneous residue, a phenomenon known as the coffee-ring effect. Here we show that this ring-like self-assembly can be controlled acoustically to form homogeneous disc-like or concentrated spot-like residues. The principle of our method lies in the formation of dynamic patterns of particles in acoustically excited droplets, which inhibits the evaporation-driven convective transport of particles towards the contact line. We elucidate the mechanisms of this pattern formation and also obtain conditions for the suppression of the coffee-ring effect. Our results provide a more general solution to suppress the coffee-ring effect without any physiochemical modification of the fluids, the particles or the surface, thus potentially useful in a broad range of industrial and analytical applications that require homogenous solute depositions