Extensive use of pesticides in agricultural production results in increased health risks and health costs, productivity loss, and degradation of the environment. Farmers’ risk perceptions of pesticide residues can help mitigate these issues. This paper applies an ordered probit model to analyze farmers’ perceptions of pesticide residues using a cross-sectional dataset of 209 vegetable cultivators in Punjab, Pakistan. Important determinants of farmers’ perceptions include their educational level, family labor, ratio of self-consumed foodstuffs, health effects, integrated pest management (IPM) training, knowledge, and awareness. Among these determinants, farmers’ awareness and IPM training programs are the principle indicators of risk perception. These results have significant implications for policymakers because farmers’ perceptions including overuse of pesticides tend to worsen if supported by the internalization of social norms, which, in turn, is restricted by farmers’ awareness and knowledge. The study findings suggest that special attention should be given to farmers who are limited to receiving information directly from agricultural extension officers. Moreover, intensive IPM training programs should be designed with the aim of conveying precautionary measures for human health and a sustainable agro-ecosystem.

Social distancing has contributed enormously to controlling the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. From Latin America to East Asia and Africa, the majority of the urban dwellers are living in congested, ignored and criminalised squatter settlements with meagre resources restricting them to exercise social distancing. Stretching boundaries of the theory of planned behaviour, this article discusses how the utopia of social distancing interacts with the dystopia of living in slums. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, this article compares the lived experiences of the urban poor of Pakistan and Brazil to explore their subjectivities concerning the pandemic. This research finds that neglect of the “social distancing” is premised on socio-economic structures shaping socio-spatial realities of the urban poor. The exclusion and otherisation of these poor by the politicians, bureaucracies, and society at large is both discriminatory and criminalising. It further reveals that the absence of “social distancing” exhibits the socio-economic helplessness of such dwellers who mainly struggle to attain their basic survival needs. Therefore, the adoption of a class-sensitive approach to the pandemic is pivotal to devising an inclusive policy framework addressing the marginalised geographies.