The Hidden and External Costs of Pesticide Use

Abstract

A fair evaluation of the net benefi ts provided by pesticides is essential to feed the current debate on their benefi ts and adverse consequences. Pesticides provide many benefi ts by killing agricultural and human pests. However, they also entail several types of costs, including internal costs due to the purchase and application of pesticides, and various other costs due to the impact of treatments on human health and the environment. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of these costs and their evaluation. We defi ne four categories of costs: regulatory costs, human health costs, environmental costs and defensive expenditures. Those costs are either internal to the market, but hidden to the users, or external to the market and most often paid by a third party. We analysed 61 papers published between 1980 and 2014, and 30 independent dataset. Regulatory costs reached very large values, e.g. US$4 billion yearly in the United States in the 2000s. However, if all regulations were respected, these costs would have jumped to US$22 billion in this country. Health costs studies generally did not take into account fatal cases due to chronic exposure such as fatal outcomes of cancers. Doing so would have increased estimates of health costs by up to tenfold, e.g. from US$1.5 billion to US$15 billion in the United States in 2005. Most environmental impacts have never been quantifi ed in the literature. Environmental costs were nevertheless estimated to up to US$8 billion in the United States in 1992. Although defensive expenditures have rarely been considered in the literature, they include at least the extra cost of the part of organic food consumption due to aversive behavior linked to pesticide use. This cost reached more than US$6.4 billion worldwide in 2012. Our review thus revealed that the economic costs of pesticide use have been seldom considered in the literature and have undoubtedly

Biological control using invertebrates and microorganisms: plenty of new opportunities

“…Benefit-cost ratios of chemical pesticides are usually said to be in the order of 4 when these ''external hidden'' costs are not taken into account (e.g., Pimentel and Burgess 2014). If true costs were applied to pesticides their benefit-cost ratio would still in most cases be higher than 1, in other cases close to 1, and in some cases even below 1, and, according to Bourguet and Guillemaud (2016) ''the profitability of pesticides has, indeed, been overestimated in the past.'' Realistic pricing involving true costs would result in much higher costs of chemical pesticides and fairer competition with non-chemical alternative controls.…”

“…A total systems approach to agriculture no longer seemed necessary, but this is a short-sighted and dangerous viewpoint and the ever increasing use of synthetic pesticides has resulted in a serious loss of biodiversity (e.g., EASAC 2015), which in turn resulted in prevention or reduction in functioning of the ecosystem services of pest reduction, pollination and water purification (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). A prophylactic approach is also an exorbitant input of resources with financial consequences of billions of US$ (Costanza et al 1997;Pimentel and Burgess 2014;Bourguet and Guillemaud 2016). Lewis et al (1997) made a plea to return to a system approach based on true IPM.…”

The “Lévy or Diffusion” Controversy: How Important is the Movement Pattern in the Context of Trapping?

“…In order to determine the behavior of the increments σ 2 k (γ, ), i.e., the variance of each additional Gaussian variable required to be comparable to the original Cauchy process, we only need to write equation (8) as…”

“…Such human induced pressures on the environment, often contribute towards bio-diversity loss and affect the functioning of ecosystems [3][4][5]. Other major drawbacks which are not necessarily related, include; cancer related diseases for those handling such chemicals [6,7], increased consumer costs [8], poor efficiency in reaching targeted pests [9], pest resistance to regular use [10] and lethal effects on natural enemies [11], possibly leading to a resurgence of the pest population or a secondary pest to emerge. Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary pesticide application or risk of triggering pest outbreaks, accurate evaluation of population abundance is key [12].…”

The “Lévy or Diffusion” Controversy: How Important Is the Movement Pattern in the Context of Trapping?

“…Such human-induced pressures on the environment often contribute towards bio-diversity loss and affect the functioning of ecosystems [3][4][5]. Other major drawbacks, which are not necessarily related, include cancer-related diseases for those handling such chemicals [6,7], increased consumer costs [8], poor efficiency in reaching targeted pests [9], pest resistance to regular use [10] and lethal effects on natural enemies [11], possibly leading to a resurgence of the pest population or a secondary pest to emerge. Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary pesticide application or the risk of triggering pest outbreaks, accurate evaluation of population abundance is key [12].…”