Rolling the dice: on-farm benefits of research into reducing pesticide use
2003
Brethour, Cher | Weersink, Alfons
Concerns over the effects of pesticide use in agriculture have led to several policy initiatives including the funding of research into pesticide-reduction technologies. The net present value of farm-level net returns were calculated for a sample of ten research projects funded by such a program. Three major findings were obtained. First, less than half of these applied research projects were adopted at the farm level. Second, while there were few successful projects in terms of adoption, the net returns to producers from these successful projects was greater than the research costs of all funded projects. The net farm-level returns was $6.16 for a dollar spent on research. These returns to research for pesticide reduction is in the range of estimated for other general research projects within agriculture. Third, the adoption rate of the successful projects tended to be immediate followed by a linear decline rather than typically assumed pattern of slow then rapid then slow adoption.
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