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 233482, Working Papers from Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2)

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: Agricultural and Food Policy; Environmental Economics and Policy; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2016
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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:ags:inrasl:233482

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.233482

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