Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-19T19:30:25.479Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Advanced Method for Economic Threshold Determination: A Positive Approach*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2016

Hovav Talpaz  and
Ray E. Frisbie
Hovav Talpaz
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
Ray E. Frisbie
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
Get access

Extract

Economic entomologists have historically concerned themselves with reducing or preventing insect damage. These goals have led to the “economic threshold” concept used by entomologists to define a pest population level at which controls should be initiated (National Research Council, pp. 240). Stern (1966) defined it as “… the pest population density at which control measures should be determined to prevent an increasing population from reaching the economic injury level.” A serious attempt was made by J.C. Headley to define the economic threshold as the “ … population (of pests) that produces incremental damage equal to the cost of preventing that damage” (Headley, p. 105). Although logically sound, Headley's model, designed to quantify its definition, fails to treat the time dimension properly as shown in Hall and Norgaard's two-variable model (Hall and Norgaard, pp. 199-201). This two-variable model holds only under rather strong assumptions (Borosh and Talpaz, pp. 642-643), and a priori considers only a situation with a single pesticide treatment policy. A multiple treatment case was developed (Talpaz and Borosh, pp. 769-775) with equal physiological time intervals between treatments, which may apply to some special cases. An interesting effort to introduce increasing pest resistance was made by Hueth and Regev (pp. 543-555).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , December 1975 , pp. 19 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Agricultural Economics Association 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful remarks and suggestions received from the Editor, the three ananymous reviewers, and the many project participants. This study was funded in part by CSRS, NSF's sponsored IPM project under Cooperative Agreement 12-14-100-11, 194(33), and by the Texas Agricultural Experiment and Extension Services.

References

[1] Borosh, Itshak and Talpaz, Hovav. “On the Timing and Application of Pesticides: Comment,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 56:642–643, August 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[2] Carlson, Gerald A. “A Decision Theoretic Approach to Crop Disease Prediction and Control,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 52:216–233, May 1970.Google Scholar
[3] Dunnam, E.W., Clark, J.C. and Calhoun, S.L.. “Effect of the Removal of Squares and Yield of Upland Cotton,” Journal of Economic Entomology, 36:896–900, 1943.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[4] Gaines, J.C., Owen, W.L. Jr. and Wipprecht, R.. “Effect of Dusting Schedules on the Yield of Cotton,” Journal of Economic Entomology, 40:113–115, 1947.Google Scholar
[5] Hall, Darwin C. and Norgaard, Richard B.. “On the Timing and Application of Pesticides,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 55:198–201, May 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[6] Hamner, A.L. “Fruiting of Cotton in Relation to Cotton Fleahopper and Other Insects Which Do Similar Damage to Squares,” Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin, 360:1–11, 1941.Google Scholar
[7] Headley, J.C. “Defining the Economic Threshold,” Pest Control Strategy for the Future, Washington D.C.: National Academy of Science, 1972.Google Scholar
[8] Hueth, D. and Regev, Uri. “Optimal Agricultural Pest Management With Increasing Pest Resistance,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 56:543–552, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[9] National Research Council Subcommittee on Insect Pests of the Committee on Plant and Animal Pests. “Insect Management Control,” Principles of Plant and Animal Pest Control, Chapter 17, Vol. 3, 1969.Google Scholar
[10] Shoemaker, Christine. “Optimization of Agricultural Pest Management 1: Biological and Mathematical Background,” Mathematical Bioscience, 16:143–175, February 1973.Google Scholar
[11] Stern, V.M. Proceedings FAO Symposium on International Pest Management, pp. 42–43, 1966.Google Scholar
[12] Stern, V.M. “Economic Threshold,” An. Review of Entomology, 18:259–280, 1973.Google Scholar
[13] Talpaz, , Hovav, and Borosh, Itshak. “Strategy for Pesticide Use: Frequency and Applications,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 56:769–775, November 1974.Google Scholar