An Evaluation of Integrated Pest Management with Heterogeneous Participation

Principal component analysis is employed to develop indices that distinguish between participants and nonparticipants in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs. Results of incorporating these indices into yield, net return, and production cost functions for cotton producers indicate that both yield and costs increase as the degree of producer participation in IPM increases. Although these results are inconsistent with previous research, they are consistent with the theoretical relationship between IPM and conventional input usage. Application of chemical pesticides is one of the management practices which have contributed to increased crop yields dur-ing the last three decades. However, widespread use of these pesticides has re-sulted in significant increases in insect re-sistance as well as ecological, public health, and worker safety concerns. Thus, pest control through the application of pesti-cides evolved into integrated pest man-agement (IPM) programs. The general ob-jective of IPM programs is to optimally manage pest populations such that pro-ducers ' net returns are maintained or en-hanced with minimal environmental deg-radation. Considerable public expenditures have been made on these programs. As a result, evaluation of IPM programs is helpful in determining their effectivenes