Modern technology through Agri-business has aggressively introduced the use of pesticides in the control of pests attacking agriculture products. Today its use has become widespread in rural communities. While technology has promised good harvest, the side effects of pesticides on the users is hardly impressed on the farmers most of which are illiterate. This is a pre and post interventional study aimed to assess the effect of lecture and pamphlet as health education intervention on the knowledge, attitude, and practices of the farmers on the use of pesticides in Municipality of Lakewood, Zamboanga del Sur. Respondents of this study were rice and vegetable farmers who were an active member of Farmers’ Association. Two groups of respondents were enrolled in this study. First group for the lecture intervention consisted of 34 farmers from Barangays Tubod, Poblacion, Biswangan. The second group of farmers was 63 respondents from a separate Barangays of Lukuan, Baking and Bagong Kahayag. Respondents were unequally distributed and no comparison was made for the two interventional tools. Comparison was made within the group only. These two groups could not be compared because the knowledge before the intervention were not the same. The knowledge, theoretical practices, attitudes and practices of the respondents were evaluated before and after the intervention using an interviewer-assisted questionnaire. Two post-tests were given; one 1 month after the intervention, and 2 months after the intervention. A checklist was also used to evaluate the actual practices of the respondents before and after the intervention. To determine enhancement of knowledge, Paired t-test was used. For the attitudes and actual practices, Wilcoxon Rank for statistical data was used. For the actual practices, McNemar’s test was used. For the lecture group, the results for knowledge revealed that the mean knowledge score for pre intervention was 24.58 and after a month, it was increased to 26.03. Two months after the intervention, the mean score increased to 26.91. This results suggests that while there was a only a slight increase in knowledge, these was nonetheless retention. The first and the second post interventions of the lecture method were relatively good in developing correct attitudes of the respondents on pesticides, specifically on the harm that pesticides can cause to the environment and consumers. Both the first and the second post interventions in the lecture method were also good alternatives in enhancing appropriate actual practices of the respondents like in proper storage and disposal of pesticides, proper safety measures against pesticides, and in prohibitive actions during pesticide application. The pamphlet method, both in its first and second post interventions, did not make any significant change in the knowledge of the respondents. Generally, the first post intervention of the pamphlet method was effective in developing correct attitudes of the respondents specifically in the harms that pesticides cause to the environment and in the importance of having knowledge about pesticides. The first post intervention had improved the theoretical practices of the respondents like in proper use of equipment during pesticide application, use of protective gear, and used of pesticides. It also relatively improved the actual practices of the respondents on the areas of storage and disposal of pesticides, proper safety measures against pesticides, and prohibitive actions during pesticide application.

Keyword: health education lecture versus pamphlet pre-post interventional study pesticides lakewood zamboanga del sur