Overcoming Market and Technical Obstacles to Alternative Pest Management in Arable Systems

Status: Completed
Type of Project: Research Report
Principal Investigator: Dr Alastair Bailey, University of Kent (Email)
Publications, Data and Other Outputs

Policy and Practice Note

 

Objectives

Despite the widespread concerns regarding the use of pesticides in food production and considerable research into potentially viable biological pest control alternatives, pest control in UK field crops relies almost singly on chemical pesticides inputs. Reasons for this lack of adoption of alternative technologies, such as bio-control, may be technical, economic or a complex interplay of both. Economists highlight the potential ‘path dependency’ of an industry in continuing to employ a suboptimal technology, caused by past dynamics of adoption resulting in differential private cost structures of each technique. Further, risk aversion on the part of farmers regarding the perceived efficacy of a new technology and ‘jointness’ in the chemical control of a range of pests may limit up-take.

In this project we conduct innovative natural science research to evaluate an existing (i.e. habitat manipulation) and novel (i.e. semiochemical ‘push-pull’) biocontrol technology considering ecological mechanisms and impacts from lab to farm scales. We combine this technical knowledge with outputs from novel social and economic analyses of path dependency, considering factors such as private costs of adoption, consumer preference and retailer led supply chain governance. By choosing an ‘established’ and a new technology, we aim to use this programme of technical and economic research to look backward and forward in developing effective tools to evaluate and promote the adoption of biochemical control technology into the UK agricultural systems.