Optimal pest control in greenhouse production of ornamental crops

Abstract

In this study, we develop a conceptual bioeconomic model of floriculture production with aesthetic benefits, wherein optimal decision rules depend on an intertemporal economic objective to maximize profits subject to economic and biological processes. Necessary conditions of the model identify optimal trajectories (e.g., simultaneous, single, or cycling controls) that define decision rules and economic thresholds for profit maximizing growers producing crops with aesthetic attributes. The necessary conditions also highlight intertemporal trade-offs between aesthetic benefits and expected future net benefits of arthropod stocks, which have important policy implications. The model is applied to the greenhouse production system of ivy geranium. Copyright 2006 International Association of Agricultural Economics.

Adopting biological control for ornamental crops in greenhouses.

“…Moffit [17] provides a good overview of break-even pest control (i.e. revenues equal costs implying profit is zero), while Schumacher et al [5] identifies marginal pest thresholds (i.e. intertemporal profit maximization behaviour).…”

“…In other words, presence of an insect on a plant is often perceived as a signal of lower quality that leads to a lower willingness to pay (WTP) for the product by the consumer. Schumacher et al [5] economically identified aesthetic benefits derived from the visual presence of pests and predators in production of ornamental greenhouse crops. Their analysis suggests that educating consumers about the benefits of predators on ornamental crops (i.e.…”

“…Because the production environment of interest is a controlled greenhouse, horticultural management (fertilizer or irrigation) and pest management (chemical or biological) generally not feasible in traditional agricultural production are practiced at frequent time intervals. Through this process, growers make important tradeoffs among horticultural and pest practices to keep plant quality and visual levels of insects (pest or predators) at acceptable levels for consumers [5]. It is interesting then to explore some of the issues that greenhouse growers face when adopting biological controls, ranging from firm behaviour to sourcing inputs (i.e.…”

When ignorance is not bliss: Pest control decisions involving beneficial insects

“…More recent work focuses on optimal management of invasive species across time and space (Brown and Zilberman, 2002;Ceddia et al, 2009). Some work has added a predaceous Ecological Economics 107 (2014) [104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113] insect population, but without considering pesticide toxicity to the predator (Marsh et al, 2000;Schumacher et al, 2006).…”

Primary and secondary pest management in agriculture: balancing pesticides and natural enemies in potato production

“…In the case study of TSSM control in ivy geranium, Schumacher et al. () pointed out that a grower can reduce the frequency of chemical applications by introducing predators of TSSM. However, their study was done in the context of green house plants and primary–secondary pest problem was not addressed.…”