Efficacité privée et publique de la gestion du risque phytosanitaire : le rôle de l'information

Abstract

The analysis of farmers' phytosanitary information use requires the specification of information as an input that is produced and used on the farm. The information input is assumed to consist in a signal that is correlated with (future) pest infestation of the farmers' fields. This signal is received by farmers before they choose their pest applications. The quality of information is measured by the accuracy of the signal in predicting the actual infestation. Using this approach it is easily shown that farmers' attitude toward risk, information quality and pesticide application costs play crucial roles in farmers' crop protection decisions. In order to study farmers' information use decisions we also consider the production cost of this input for farmers. Within this framework, although they appear inefficient from a public standpoint, it is assumed that systematic pesticide applications may be chosen by economically efficient farmers. Showing that the information production cost is likely to be high for a large part of French farmers' population we conclude that this cost is likely to be one of the most determinant factor explaining the current use of systematic pesticide applications by French farmers. Despite their weaknesses, the models developed in this paper provide some guidelines for pesticide use reduction policy design. Within the current European economic context, the use of information relative to pest infestation should result in a decrease in farmers' pesticide uses. This result is, to a large extent, supported by the fact that pesticides appear relatively cheap. As a consequence, the implementation of instruments aimed at the promotion of the use of phytosanitary information could be used as a policy intended to decrease farmers' pesticide applications. However, the promotion of information use can only be viewed as a medium or long term policy. Infortnation use by farmers requires adjustments in quasi-fixed factors (human capital, labour) and/or structural adjustments (creations of public or private firms producing expertise services). It is also shown that farmers' willingness to pay for phytosanitary information is an increasing function of pest application costs. This result implies that farmers' pesticide demand elasticity could be important (in absolute value) in the long run, i.e. due to adjustments in information uses. It also implies that a tax on the price of pesticide would strengthen the effects of policies aimed at reducing the information production costs for farmers.