Economic Evaluation of Pesticide Use Externalities in the Cotton Zones of Punjab, Pakistan

M. Azeem Khan, Muhammad Iqbal (), Iftikhar Ahmad and Manzoor Soomro

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The crop protection strategy in Pakistan is almost entirely based on pesticide use whereas development of integrated pest management (IPM) based technologies is in its initial phases of scrutiny as well as implementation. The inefficient use of chemicals has resulted in environmental pollution and sub-optimal returns to the society on the costly investments. This study estimates the social cost of pesticide use and suggests appropriate guidelines for regulating the safe use of pesticides. An overall economic evaluation of the externalities for the current pesticide use levels shows that external costs are quite higher than the currently paid price at the farm gate level. The environmental degradation and public health costs inflicted on the society due to the inefficient chemical use on cotton crop amounts to twelve thousand million rupees. The reduced reliance on crop protection through chemical methods seems inevitable for a sustainable and healthy crop production.

Keywords: economic evaluation; externalities; pesticide use; social cost; crop protection; Punjab; Pakistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002, Revised 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published in The Pakistan Development Review 41.4(2002): pp. 683-698

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2688/1/MPRA_paper_2688.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Economic Evaluation of Pesticide Use Externalities in the Cotton Zones of Punjab, Pakistan (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:2688

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().