Pesticide use and cooperative management of natural enemy habitat in a framed field experiment

Bell, Andrew Reid; Zhang, Wei; Keosothea, Nou

doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2015.11.012

Cited by 33 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…through establishing hedgerows and woodlots) can provide needed habitat resources and functions for natural enemies [4,38]. When arthropods providing biological control services move at the landscape level such as is the case for ladybeetles [39], and farm sizes are small as they are in the NCP [21], economic assessment at the landscape level and coordination of habitat management across neighboring farms becomes advantageous [40,30].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering the economic value of natural enemies and true costs of chemical insecticides to cotton farmers in China

Huang

Zhou

Zhang

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Little empirical evidence on the economic value of biological control of pests at farm level is available to improve economic decision-making by farmers and policy makers. Using insect sampling and household survey in an integrated bio-economic analysis framework, this paper studies farmers' crop management practices in cotton in the North China Plain, and estimates the marginal value of natural enemies and costs of chemical insecticides to farmers. Ladybeetles (mainly Harmonia axyridis, Propylea japonica, and Coccinella septempunctata), the dominant natural enemy group that controls the primary pest (aphid) in cotton in our study area, provide a significant economic benefit that is unknown to the farmers. Even at the current high levels of insecticide use, an additional ladybeetle provides an economic benefit of 0.05 CNY (almost USD 0.01) to farmers. The use of broad-spectrum insecticides by farmers is alarmingly excessive, not only undermining farmers' cotton profitability but also inducing social costs as well as disruption of the natural pest suppression system. Doubling current ladybeetle density in cotton field could gain an estimated USD 300 million for cotton farmers in China, providing a strong economic case for policies to move the pest control system towards a more ecologically-based regime, with positive consequences for farm income and environmental health. With rising use of biological control service provided by natural enemies such as ladybeetles in cotton fields, significant falls in farmers' insecticide use would be expected, which could raise the value of ladybeetles and other natural enemies even further. The results indicate that there is an urgent need to rationalize inputs and move forward to improved agro-ecosystem management in smallholder farming system. Raising knowledge and awareness on the costs and value of biological pest control versus insecticides among farmers and policy makers and having effective extension service, are priorities towards achieving a more ecologically-based approach to crop protection on smallholder farms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering the economic value of natural enemies and true costs of chemical insecticides to cotton farmers in China

Huang

Zhou

Zhang

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…NonCropShare-a coordination game for insectbased ecosystem services We applied a version of the published game NonCrop-Share (Bell et al 2013(Bell et al , 2016b, a symmetric, turn-based coordination game for the provision of insect-based ecosystem services played on tablet computers linked via a mobile hotspot. In NonCropShare, each of the four players takes responsibility for land use decisions on a 3×3 grid-cell section (farm) of a 6×6 grid-cell agricultural landscape (figure 1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Payments discourage coordination in ecosystem services provision: evidence from behavioral experiments in Southeast Asia

Zhang

2016

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The contribution of synthetic pesticides to closing yield gaps around the world is undeniable; however, their use is also a classic double-edged sword. Beyond the well-recognized social costs (e.g., pollution to soil and water, and health effects both on consumers and other species) there are also private costs on farmers beyond the direct costs of inputs, associated with elevated risks of both acute and chronic damage to farmers' health, and with the destruction of populations of beneficial organisms. Managing agricultural land use to enhance natural pest control services (also called mobile agentbased ecosystem services or MABES) holds promise to reduce this growing reliance on pesticides, though it too carries costs. In particular, uncertainty in crop yield due to pest damages, as well as the need to coordinate pesticide use with neighboring farms, can be important obstacles to establishing the longer-term public good of natural pest regulation. Current thinking on promoting ecosystem services suggests that payments or other economic incentives are a good fit for the promotion of public good ecosystem services such as MABES. We undertook a framed field experiment to examine the role of subsidies for non-crop habitat in improving insect-based ecosystem services in two separate samples in Southeast Asia-Cambodia and Vietnam. Our central finding is that these two contexts are not poised equally to benefit from incentives promoting MABES, and in fact may be left worse off by payments schemes. As the study and practice of payments for ecosystem services programs grows, this finding provides an important qualifier on recent theory supporting the use of payments to promote public good ecosystem services-where the nature of the coordination problem is complex and nonlinear, farm systems can be made worse off by being encouraged to attempt it.

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“…To some extent, mobile devices have already made it possible to take the lab to the field, playing games across local networks on tablet computers just about anywhere (Bell et al, 2016c). However, the real advantage of the advent of ICT for framed field experiments is that participants can be engaged over an extended period of time (days, weeks, or months), breaking the bounds of human attention span and opening the door to participation in different treatments and different games, requiring a few minutes of attention at a time.…”

Section: Data Collection Under Ictsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informing decisions in agent-based models — A mobile update

Bell

2017

Environmental Modelling & Software

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Pesticide use and cooperative management of natural enemy habitat in a framed field experiment

Cited by 33 publications

References 35 publications

Uncovering the economic value of natural enemies and true costs of chemical insecticides to cotton farmers in China

Uncovering the economic value of natural enemies and true costs of chemical insecticides to cotton farmers in China

Payments discourage coordination in ecosystem services provision: evidence from behavioral experiments in Southeast Asia

Informing decisions in agent-based models — A mobile update

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