Producers' perceptions of public good agricultural practices and their pesticide use: The case of MyGAP for durian farming in Pahang, Malaysia

There have been growing interests in the rise of public GAP standards in Southeast Asia that have been implemented by the governments in the region. This paper investigates the local implementation of Malaysian public GAP standard called MyGAP by examining its effectiveness in raising the awareness and improving the land use practices of participant small-scale farmers toward better food safety and quality assurance. For this objective, 19 MyGAP certified and 57 uncertified durian farms in the state of Pahang, Malaysia were surveyed. The research found that while certified farm managers showed much better understanding of the basic intent of the policy than uncertified farms, their interests in and assessment of the merits from the scheme concentrate in economic realms rather than related to the original policy goal of food safety and quality assurance. As regards land use practices, certified farms showed much better performance than uncertified farms in record keeping and pesticide management. A set of circumstantial evidence seems to suggest, however, that certified farms' better pesticide management is more likely due to the certification screening of already-well-performing farmers than due to improved practices ex post facto. The observed significant discrepancy in the recent MyGAP adoption rates between durian in Pahang State and crop nationwide makes it difficult for us to determine the degree to which MyGAP's existing level of stringency in compliance led to such pre-screening determinism.