Academia Journal of Agricultural Research 8(4):
125-133, August 2020
DOI: 10.15413/ajar.2020.0106
ISSN: 2315-7739
2020 Academia Publishing
Abstract
Compensating wages for agrochemical exposure
risks of cocoa farm workers
Accepted 12th February 2020
Fadiji D. M.1, Okojie L. O.1,
Oluwalana E. O.1, Akerele D.1,2
and Okojie J. A.1
1Department of Agricultural Economics
and Farm Management, Federal University of
Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria. 2Department of Natural Resource
Management, GeoNET Research Initiatives,
Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.
Occupational risk is a major factor reducing
productivity of farm workers as it impairs their
physical capacity and increase their
vulnerability to ill health, diseases and
injuries. Agrochemical exposure risk has been
attributed to work demand and unhealthy work
environment that these workers are subjected to
which they are often not compensated.
Consequently, this study estimated the
compensating wages of life quality for
agrochemical exposure risks of cocoa farm
workers in Idanre Local Government Area, Ondo
State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique
was used to select 180 cocoa farm workers and
the data on factors affecting agrochemical
exposure risks. Data were analyzed using
descriptive statistics and linear hedonic
regression. Linear hedonic regression showed
that temperature (β = 5.02), health index (β =
9.65) and participating in agrochemical spraying
(β = 44.71) had positive and significant
(p<0.05) influence on compensating wages, while
smoking (β = -41.77) and use of personal
protective gadgets during spraying (β =-31.67)
had negative and significant (p<0.05) influence.
Cocoa farm workers received ₦75.00k per day as
compensation for incurring occupational risks.
The study concluded that appropriate use of
personal protective equipment minimizes
agrochemical exposure risks. It is therefore
recommended that educational programs that will
enhance farmer’s knowledge, skills and attitude
to adopt safety measures in pesticide usage
should be adequately planned.
This is an open access article
published under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
Cite this article as:
Fadiji DM, Okojie LO, Oluwalana EO, Akerele D,
Okojie JA (2020). Compensating wages for
agrochemical exposure risks of cocoa farm
workers. Acad. J. Agric. Res.
8(4): 125-133.