Pesticide externalities from the US agricultural sector - The impact of internalization, reduced pesticide application rates, and climate change

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This study uses mathematical programming to examine alternative assumptions about regulations of external costs from pesticide applications in US agriculture. We find that, without external cost regulation, climate change benefits from increased agricultural production in the US may be more than offset by increased environmental costs. The internalization of the pesticide externalities increase farmers’ production costs but increase farmers’ income because of price adjustments and associated welfare shifts from consumers to producers. Our results also show that full internalizations of external pesticide costs substantially reduces preferred pesticide applications rates for corn and soybeans as climate change.
Original languageEnglish
JournalProcedia Environmental Sciences
Volume6
Pages (from-to)153-161
Number of pages9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work has received partial funding from the International Max-Planck Research School for Maritime Affairs, the European Commission, the Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction (CliSAP) cluster of excellence at Hamburg University, and the Michael Otto Foundation for Environmental Protection.

    Research areas

  • Sustainability Science - climate change impacts, pesticide externalities, farm management adaptation, agricultural sector model, welfare maximization, environmental policy analysis

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