Influence of paddy farming behavior on human health in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Paddy farming in Sri Lanka can be divided into three schemes according to the source of water availability for farming. Scale of cultivation depends on the schemes. Most of the paddy farmers try to achieve desirable outputs but they are least concerned about the undesirable byproducts of their production processes. In the paddy farming belt in Sri Lanka, kidney and teeth diseases have been spreading significantly. This study is an attempt to find out the influence of paddy farming behavior on human health and how it varies within different cultivation schemes. Then this study has achieved the objective of examining the magnitude differences of influence of paddy farming on human heath with in the schemes of cultivation based on monetary value estimation. Both primary and secondary data were used in the research. Primary data was collected through structured interview method. Using the mix method of stratified and cluster random sampling, 150 paddy farmers were selected as a sample for the interview from the three schemes of paddy cultivation. The monetary value estimation of this negative effect was existed by using the mathematical formulas which were formularized based on non-market evaluation methods of cost of illness and lost output approaches. Further one-way ANOVA and chi-square test were utilized to achieve the objective of the study. According to the analysis, it was indicated that the Influence of paddy farming behavior on human health is vary within cultivation schemes. Further the result shows that the contribution an individual paddy famer for the cost of negative influences on human heath was allocated as 52012.55 LKR and 23218.06 LKR in major irrigated scheme and minor irrigated scheme respectively.