Optimal use of pesticide for paddy production in the south-west region of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Use of pesticide in agricultural production abates crop damages from pest attack. However, it affects farmers’ health and environmental ecology negatively. Hence, revealing socially optimal level of pesticide use is an essence. We estimate such optimal level by accounting both positive and negative effects through using damage control and willingness to pay approaches, and then, compute associated social welfare gain for paddy production in the south-west region of Bangladesh. Similar studies focusing paddy production, one of the most pesticide-intensive agricultural practices in Bangladesh, have not been found in the literature. The study finds the socially optimal level of pesticide use to be 1081 gram/acre against the mean use 1600 gram/acre. Accordingly, around 32 percent of mean pesticide is overused, though it is far below than the private optimal level. Adoption of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) technology with training limits such overuses close to socially optimal level. This adoption generates substantial health and environmental benefit of BDT 4902 per acre at a cost of private loss BDT 241 per acre. Hence, social welfare gain is around BDT 4660 per acre or around US$ 200 million in aggregate. However, this estimate widely varies with the adoption of IPM with or without training.

KEYWORDS:

• Social optimum
• pesticide, damage control function
• marginal willingness to pay
• integrated pest management
• south-west region of Bangladesh

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge to the survey respondents for providing valuable information. Acknowledgements are also due to Economics Discipline, Khulna University, Bangladesh for granting permission to conduct the study as a partial fulfillment of MSS degree. However, the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the respondents or of the concerned organisation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. 1 maund = 40 kg.

2. .

3. Equivalent to 71.06 ha⁻¹ for 1 kilogram of pesticide.

4. Multiplying the marginal product of pesticide use with output price, i.e. BDT 705 per maund.

5. Alpha coefficient is statistically significant at 1 percent level, as shown in column 5 of Table 5.

6. Vuong's test shows that z = 1.54 which is not statistically significant at 5 percent level.