Integrated Pest Management Portfolios in UK Arable Farming: Results of a Farmer Survey

Bailey, Alastair and Bertaglia, Marco and Fraser, Iain and Sharma, Abhijit and Douarin, Elodie (2009): Integrated Pest Management Portfolios in UK Arable Farming: Results of a Farmer Survey.

Abstract

BACKGROUND. Farmers are faced with a wide range of pest management (PM) options which can be adopted in isolation or alongside complement or substitute strategies. This paper presents the results of a survey of UK cereal producers focusing on the character and diversity of PM strategies currently used by, or available to, farmers. In addition, the survey asked various questions pertaining to agricultural policy participation, attitude toward environmental issues, sources of PM advice and information and the important characteristics of PM technologies.

RESULTS. The results indicate that many farmers do make use of a suite of PM techniques and that their choice of integrated PM (IPM) portfolio appears to be jointly dictated by farm characteristics and Government policy. Results also indicate that portfolio choice does affect the number of subsequent insecticide applications per crop.

CONCLUSIONS. These results help to identify the type of IPM portfolios considered adoptable by farmers and highlight the importance of substitution in IPM portfolios. As such, these results will help to direct R&D effort toward the realisation of more sustainable PM approaches and aid the identification of potential portfolio adopters. These findings highlight the opportunity a revised agri-environmental policy design could generate in terms of by enhancing coherent IPM portfolio adoption.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Pest management; pesticide alternatives; technology and portfolio approaches
• Subjects: Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q1 - Agriculture > Q16 - R&D ; Agricultural Technology ; Biofuels ; Agricultural Extension Services; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q55 - Technological Innovation; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O14 - Industrialization ; Manufacturing and Service Industries ; Choice of Technology

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