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Cost-benefit-analysis of chemical plant protection in Germany with specific respect to external costs of the envrionment
Project
Project code: JKI-SF-08-1173
Contract period: 01.10.2013
- 31.05.2017
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment
The assessment of costs and benefits of chemical plant protection consideing external effects aims at a holistic approach for the evaluation of plant protection in Germany. The project is going to develop and complete existing elements of cost benefit analysis of plant protection strategies further. In contrast to approaches based on avoidance and repair costs as applied by Waibel and Fleischer, new evaluations of environmental impacts are based on stated preference methods, where the evaluation focuses on the comparison of two or more conditions or situations. This approach requires to develop reference scenarios with less impact of chemical plant protection products to be compared to the status quo scenario. These alternatives can assume the complete abandonment or different approaches of reducing the application of chemical plant protection products (e.g. limiting amounts, IPM, extension of ecologic plant production). For these scenarios changes in benefits and costs will be described and quantified.
Pesticides are an important input factor in agricultural production to maintain yield, quality and income security. Besides these positive on-farm effects the application of pesticides may cause external costs through negative impacts on human health and the environment. Therefore two questions are of main interest: 1. Where do pesticide effects occur and what is the cost-benefit-ratio of pesticide use? 2.Who is going to pay for negative externalities and who is going to benefit from pesticide use? To answer these questions, cause-and-effect relationships between pesticide use and environmental impacts on soils, air, surface and ground water, climate, biodiversity and human health are described as far as possible. Furthermore, two scenarios - one describing the current plant protection practice according to IPM and the other one assuming the share of organically cultivated area increases up to 20 % accordingly to the national sustainability strategy – are presented. Both scenarios will be compared to a chemical free cropping system.
Section overview
Subjects
- Crop Protection
- Agroeconomics