USE OF INSECTICIDES AMONG COWPEA FARMERS IN FUFORE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF ADAMAWA STATE, NIGERIA

Cowpea is a good and cheapest source of protein to human beings and feeds to livestock. Production of the crop is accompanied with insect pests problems which makes the use of insecticides imperative. The broad objective was to analyze the use of insecticides among cowpea farmers in Fufore Local Government Area, Adamawa State, Nigeria, and the specific objectives were to describe the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, identify the common insecticides used by the respondents, determine the costs of insecticides incurred per unit area to control cowpea pests by the respondents, determine the socio-economic factors influencing the use of insecticides for control of cowpea pests by the respondents, and identify the major constraints encountered by the respondents in cowpea production in the study area. Data for this research were obtained from primary source with the aid of questionnaires. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regression. The linear regression results shows that the use of insecticides by the respondents is influenced directly by their educational level (0.014115), Household size (0.004386), Farming experience (0.008612) and Farm size (0.036816). Similarly, age of the respondents inversely affect their decision to use insecticides (-0.003066). An average of N3,737.17 was incurred in procuring insecticides to control cowpea pests per hectare. The entire respondents used modern insecticides. The common insecticides used were Cypermethrim 10EC or 10%EC and Lambda-cyhalothrim, were mostly used. Majority of the respondents (29.05%) were at their active age of 40-49 years, most of them (84.76%) were male, 90.48% were married, 32.86% (majority) had family size 6-10, and 56.67% had one form of formal education of another, while 73.81% were engaged in farming. It could be concluded that, the use of insecticides for control of pests in cowpea production will not only lead to food security among farmers in the production area, but will help in general food security all over the country since cowpea is an important protein food consumed far beyond the immediate production area. Based on the above, I recommend that: effective insecticides should be made available to farmers when required, youths should be encouraged to embark on cowpea production, government should have a political will towards agriculture so as to improve extension services, and cowpea farmers should adopt integrated pest management (IPM) as a remedy to pest problems in cowpea production