The Economics of Soybean Disease Management

Kalaitzandonakes, N., Kaufman, J., Zahringer, K.

Publisher: CABI

As the world population passes 7.5 billion on its way to 9 billion by 2050, the global agrifood industry faces the challenge of feeding more people from a fixed or even decreasing amount of agricultural land, water, and other resources. This can happen through significant productivity gains in agriculture and through reductions in post-harvest losses and food waste. In crop production, developing higher yielding varieties and improved crop protection methods that reduce the amount of produce lost to weed, insect, and pathogen pests are the primary strategies for securing productivity gains. Both of these strategies are constant areas of research by universities, public research institutes, and private firms.

This book is concerned with one aspect of the quest for productivity, the economics of managing diseases that affect soybean production. The essential scientific research undertaken is just the first step in meeting the productivity challenge. The ultimate goal is to develop new methods and practices that are adopted by farmers and effectively used in the field. The book explores the crop protection practices that are available to soybean farmers for controlling diseases and associated yield losses, the inherent complexity in the crop protection decisions that farmers must make, the economic impacts of such decisions, and the linkages between producer decisions and the decisions made by technology developers in R&D which shape the development of future solutions for controlling disease and associated losses.