Survey-based research in Oman suggests safety levels related to pesticide use increase when farmers belong to a local association; compliance with local pesticide regulations increases.
Yes, membership of an association entails to follow rules and regulations and maintaining very high standard relevant to occupational health and safety. Membership of a farmers’ association will also help to educate new members with information on chemicals safety and to become aware of information on new pesticides, banned pesticides, and government legislations/guidelines for safe use of pesticides as well as taking care of the environment when applying pesticides close by ecologically sensitive areas such as waterways, Ramsar wetlands, bee industry or fisheries for examples
I work for a combined Research and Extension Agency - Teagasc. Yes , membersship of a network is likely to be positive. Research by my colleagues (Heanue and Hennessy,2012 and Bogue,2012), indicates that 'Discussion Groups' are superior in gaining adoption of farm practices and technology than other approaches. However, the effect of an association depends on its objectives - if it has soley representative objectives for instance, its impact on adoption by farmers may be limited.
From my experience, I will say yes to the question. Usually, the ideals, vision and objectives of associations drive their members and they tend to obey the rules and guidelines set by the association. Of course, there may be deviants who don't tend to strictly follow every rule of the association. But the education and training that associations organize for its members in terms of safe use, misuse and abuse of pesticides are generally followed. Farmers learn a lot from their peers especially on technologies that work and save cost.
I think your result is logical. Local producer association triggers more peer pressure on respecting collective regulations because by definition an individual farmer recieve no peer pressure.
Even more, producers institutions (whether cooperatives or associations) tends to be linked with regulatory schemes (whether it's an organic, fairtrade, subsidy based regulation, etc) that often have certification bodies which audit farms and institutions.
Finally, I see no reason why a collective organization would induce in average less respect for regulation (whether pesticide related or not is not that much important). I know no regulatory scheme in the world that would discharge producer in organization and impose regulation only on individual farmers only. Do you?
I don't have any scientific source for this claim, but I've worked several years on Fairtrade and Organic certified cooperatives in several continents.
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