ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we begin focusing on the interpretations of the farmer’s behaviours. It explores the sources of the farmers’ behaviours in one of the principal demands of life, health. Health presents a problematic query for anyone since health is a set of conditions that is identifiable only by its absence. This difficulty of identifying what constitutes health perpetuates the distance between those with medical and chemical expertise and ordinary people like the farmers. With the distance intact, the farmers usually have to be the final decision-makers – a corollary to their restored autonomy – on the choice of using or not using the chemicals. Given these difficulties and skewed responsibility, the AO families present a particularly intriguing puzzle to examine how their presence influences the thinking and behaviours of other farmers. This chapter, using Nassim Taleb’s “black swan,” a metaphor for a rare event, argues that the farmers fail to recognize that there could be lessons they could learn from the AO families for the use of agrochemicals.
