How to achieve significant reduction in pesticide use? An empirical evaluation of the impacts of pesticide taxation associated to a change in cropping practice

Fabienne Femenia and Elodie Letort

No 16-02, Working Papers SMART from INRAE UMR SMART

Abstract: In this paper, we use an econometric approach to investigate the impacts of potential changes in cropping practices on the reduction in pesticide use implied by a taxation policy. We combine economic data, reflecting the relatively intensive cropping practices currently used in France, and experimental agronomic data on a low-input technology to estimate micro-econometric models of farmers’ production and acreage choices. In a second step, these estimated models are used to conduct policy simulations. Our results show that a small tax on pesticide use could provide agricultural producers sufficient economic incentive to adopt low-input cropping practices and thereby lead to significant reductions in pesticide use, close to public short-term objectives. However, given the limited impacts of taxation once these practices have been adopted, other public instruments or further improvement of low-input cropping systems should be considered to achieve more ambitious longer term public objectives.

Keywords: econometric model; field trial data; pesticide taxation; low-input technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C54 Q12 Q18 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Working Paper: How to achieve significant reduction in pesticide use? An empirical evaluation of the impacts of pesticide taxation associated to a change in cropping practice (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rae:wpaper:201602

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