Economic Analysis of Cotton Management Strategies Integrated Pest

Abstract

In an attempt to combat problems of insect resistance and the increasing cost of new insecticides, integrated pest management (IPM) systems have been developed for many crops, including cotton. Cotton IPM systems include such components as scouting to determine when control actions should be taken, planting trap crops, and using short season varieties of cotton. Regardless of the component(s) of IPM systems for cotton, when a decision is made that a direct control action is warranted, the control action most often used is the application of insecticides. Thus, although IPM strategies may reduce the frequency of insecticide applications and consequently reduce the possible problem of insecticide resistance, the use of conventional, broad-spectrum insecticides continues to be the primary control tool when insect outbreaks occur.

Pests and pesticides, risk and risk aversion

“…Moffitt et a1. Liapis and Moffitt (1983) used the exponential utility moment generating function approach to calculate certainty equivalents of alternative cotton pest control strategies under different degrees of risk aversion. Osteen et a1.…”

Application of mean–Gini stochastic efficiency analysis

“…This section reports some ®ndings related to this issue based on an empirical comparison using four studies from the literature. Speci®cally, the constant absolute risk aversion interval which corresponds to the mean-Gini ecient set is derived for choice among dierent yielding rice varieties in the Philippines (Roumasset 1976;Yassour, Zilberman and Rausser 1981), dierent pest management strategies in the southern United States (Liapis and Mott 1983), dierent United States Department of Agriculture commodity programme features (Kramer and Pope 1981), and dierent tillage practices in corn and soybean production in the midwestern region of the United States (Klemme 1985). The least upper bound of the CARA eciency interval is then used to evaluate the risk premium as a percentage of gamble size in order to gain some additional insight in a visceral sense to the risk preferences included in the mean-Gini ecient set (Babcock, Choi and Feinerman 1993).…”

“…The stochastic eciency of dierent pest management strategies for cotton pests in the southern United States was analysed by Liapis and Mott (1983) using a certainty equivalence approach. Four dierent strategies were analysed including a biological control strategy referred to as Trichogramma Releases in table 2 and a co-operative, area-wide strategy referred to as Community Management in table 2.…”

“…Two other strategies which avoid use of pest controls were also analysed as indicated in the table. Basic data used by Liapis and Mott (1983) include an average price of $0.63 per unit of yield and average yield per acre (665,604,625,516), pest control cost per acre (137,29,15,14), and standard deviation of yield per acre (105,205,251,192) for the four strategies Trichogramma Releases, Community Management, Untreated Community Management, and Untreated Outside Community, respectively (table 2).…”

“…Pairwise comparison of the dierent strategies according to the mean-Gini criteria is accomplished by comparing the mean net return and a Percentage evaluated at the maximum of the constant absolute risk aversion eciency interval with gamble size re¯ected by the standard deviation of net returns. Source: Liapis and Mott (1983). the mean less one-half Gini's mean dierence as shown in the columns of the table.…”