Economic impact due to non-chemical treatment

Abstract

This research quantified the economic relevance of pests and diseases control for growers in Brazil. We aimed to quantify losses that would result from non-chemical treatment and evaluate its impact on costs, income, and profits/losses. Specifically, we considered the cases of soybean and corn crops in the 2014/15, 2015/16, and 2016/17 crop year, based on economic results from field studies. The economic models, technical data, and specialized bibliography were used to simulate the expected losses in case of non-treatment of pests. It is a scenario where growers would stop not buy and apply pesticides, but would suffer with productivity losses, leading to an increase of soybean and corn prices due to the smaller supply. We used primary data from 31 representative producing regions in 14 Brazilian states during three harvests. The results indicate that the non-treatment of pests and diseases in the studied years could cause substantial losses of profitability to the soybean and corn growers in Brazil. The non-treatment of soybean rust in 2016/17, for instance, would result in income losses of over US$ 3.7 billion, almost 9% of revenues to soybean growers. No control of Spodoptera caterpillar would cause a loss of roughly US$ 2.4 billion or 22% of revenues for corn growers. Therefore, for the years and crops studied, from the private viewpoint, the control of pests and diseases is worthwhile.