Quantifying economic and environmental tradeoffs of walnut arthropod pest management

Abstract

Many arthropod pesticides used by California walnut growers have been linked to water quality impairment. However lower risk alternatives are often associated with higher costs. The purpose of this paper was to: (1) identify currently practiced pest management strategies with probable high water quality impact, (2) quantify the importance of factors which affect economic tradeoffs associated with reducing water quality impact, and (3) identify pest management strategies that could potentially lower water quality impact with less economic consequence. An integrated analysis using environmental, economic and pesticide use data revealed that 96% of the pest management strategies analyzed were candidates for reducing the impact on water quality. Replacement of current pesticides by alternative pest controls lowered probable impact, but resulted in an economic tradeoff in the form of higher costs for the majority of growers. If biological control could eliminate the need for miticides and aphicides, this tradeoff could be replaced by savings for nearly half of the sample analyzed. This cost savings would most likely be realized by growers who currently have low numbers of pests that are not candidates for biological control, and relatively high use of organophosphates and miticides. The results indicated that if these pest management strategies had been replaced by alternative strategies and biological control, then total organophosphate, pyrethroid, and miticide active ingredient use would have been reduced by an average of 5 kg/hectare per year, while simultaneously lowering the grower’s pest management costs by an average of $128/hectare, thus contributing to both economic and environmental long-run sustainability.