Insecticide Requirements in an Efficient Agricultural Sector

Abstract

EVER since the publication of Rachel Carson's famous book, Silent Spring (1962), insecticide pollution has been an important public issue. As well as naturalists and medical researchers, economists have joined the discussion. They have rightly claimed that insecticide usage is an economic phenomenon, and they have proceeded to estimate the costs and production losses from total or partial bans.' In this paper, we consider the possibility of reducing United States insecticide usage through an efficient relocation of agricultural activities. We find that if agricultural activities were located so as to minimize the production and transportation costs to satisfy the demand for agricultural products, there would be a substantial reduction in insecticide requirements. Our argument is organized as follows. In section II, we describe United States insecticide usage, emphasizing regional differences. Section III is a discussion of studies of efficient crop relocation, i.e., studies concerned with the location of crops under cost minimizing conditions and without the influence of government price support and land retirement schemes. In section IV, we estimate the insecticide requirements for an efficient agricultural sector. The estimates are repeated in section V with alternative measures of insecticide usage, and our conclusions are summarized in section VI.