Food Systems in an Unequal World: Pesticides, Vegetables, and Agrarian Capitalism in Costa Rica

Appendix 1: Study Methodology

My hope in detailing my methodology and precise methods is for others to use them and improve upon them as they seek to understand the ways in which agrarian capitalism, food system regulation, and ecological processes shape and are shaped by farmers’ production practices and livelihoods . Also, by making agrochemical use more understandable and by providing one example of how to research it, I hope that more scholars will be interested in this important topic and pursue that interest. These methods, especially combining them, require some discipline and perseverance , but I believe they are worth the effort since they reveal new insights not possible through a single method alone. Most of the primary data presented in this book were collected from a variety of methods used during ethnographic fieldwork in Costa Rica for a couple of months in 2000 and for thirteen months from 2003 to 2004. Data on pesticide use is not regularly available in most of the world, necessitating primary social science research methods to collect information on farmers’ pesticide use. Much of the data originates from a faceto -face farmer survey that I conducted with 148 farmers, a method that researchers commonly use to obtain data on pesticide use. However, surveys alone are not sufficient, as they do not provide researchers with an understanding of the all-important context—agricultural, climatic, political economic, cultural, etc.—in which farmers’ pesticide-use decisions take place. Thus, rather than relying on a face-to-face survey alone, I adopted a multimethod political ecological approach resembling Burawoy’s (2000) extended case methodology. The extended case method involves ethnographic participant observation, interviews, library research, and other techniques. It is extended in four ways, with the extension of (1) the observer into the world of the subject, (2) observations over space and time, (3) the micro situation to macro forces, and (4) findings to inform and modify social theory. Appendix 1 Study Methodology Study Methodology 219 To this end, I complemented the survey with a number of other methods , including semistandardized interviews with a number of actors in important positions vis-à-vis agriculture (produce buyers, agricultural input salespeople, vegetable nursery owners, agronomists, and surveyed farmers); focus group discussions with export farmers as I was starting my research; participant observation; planting a test plot of comparative plantings of different national market and export vegetable varieties, which involved learning from farmers how to grow and sell vegetables; participatory pest mapping; and informal conversations with a number of people in the study site. My methods also included extensive library research in Costa Rica and mining of publicly available data sets from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These methods were integrated to help me create an understanding of the local context of pesticide use and vegetable production and their relationships to macro forces, or, as Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) emphasize , linking land users’ decisions to the broader political economy. Thus, the study design integrates what Sayer (1992) terms “extensive research,” which involves a large sample of one group (farmers), and “intensive research ,” which aims to understand the causal relationships between different groups (farmers, produce buyers, and agrochemical salespeople) and the structures that influence them through the operation of various mechanisms. More details are below. Farmer Survey Conducted through Face-to-Face Interviews My primary method for the 2003–2004 research involved a survey of 148 farmers I conducted through standardized, in-depth interviews1 of vegetable farmers in Northern Cartago and the Ujarrás Valley (see Appendix 1 in Galt 2006 for the survey instrument). The vast majority of farmers in the area are the on-farm decision makers about pesticide applications , making them the appropriate decision makers for the survey. For the few farming firms included in the survey, in which management responsibilities were divided between personnel, the farm manager in charge of spraying decisions was surveyed. The survey included questions regarding personal, household, resource, market, crop, farm, and field information. It also involved many detailed 220 Appendix 1 questions on various aspects of pesticide use, including specific pesticides used, pesticide dose, and preharvest intervals (PHIs), all asked in relation to specific crop varieties and field locations. Additionally, the last section of the survey, which was recorded with an audio recorder, allowed me to collect significant qualitative data concerning farmers’ understandings of market requirements for export and the national market (including contract provisions and cosmetic...