Economic drivers of pesticide use in Cameroon

Déterminants économiques de l’utilisation des pesticides au Cameroun

Thierry Brunelle () and Gérard de la Paix Bayiha ()
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Thierry Brunelle: CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Gérard de la Paix Bayiha: UMR Innovation - Innovation et Développement dans l'Agriculture et l'Alimentation - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement

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Abstract: Pesticide use in Cameroon has increased dramatically over the past three decades, raising concerns about human and environmental health. Although the economic mechanisms of pesticide use have been widely studied in Europe and the United States, this topic has rarely been explored in tropical countries, primarily due to the poor quality of available data. In this paper, we address this issue by using FAOSTAT data that has been cross-checked with the recently released GloPUT database to improve data reliability. We consider three main mechanisms: the effect of pesticide import prices, agricultural product prices, and labour availability. We used two independent methods to investigate the economic mechanisms of pesticide use: econometric analysis and a farmer survey. Our findings suggest that pesticide use is relatively inelastic with respect to its own price, with elasticity values greater than −1. However, due to a lack of statistical power, the significance levels of our estimates are relatively low, which warrants caution when interpreting the results and drawing conclusions.

Keywords: Bayesian estimation; Own-price elasticity of demand; Cameroun; Pesticides; fongicide; enquête; modèle mathématique; impact sur l'environnement; utilisation; prix agricole; Élasticité; petite exploitation agricole; analyse économique; élasticité des prix; prix; pesticide (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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Published in Cahiers Agricultures, 2025, 34, pp.29. ⟨10.1051/cagri/2025028⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05332527

DOI: 10.1051/cagri/2025028

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