The Center has received support from the EPA for the last 12 years addressing several major pesticide-related issues including:

• estimation of pesticide productivity
• assessment on the impacts of pesticides on health and the environment
• the economics of pesticide regulation, and
• the interaction between pesticides and agricultural policies.

We formed an interdisciplinary team with Professors Robert Spear and Ken Boggen from the School of Public Health to develop a quantitative methodology for assessing the environmental and health side effects of chemical use of agriculture.  Our approach developed a link between the risk assessment model used by public health specialists and the need of policymakers who are interested in the tradeoffs between agricultural productivity and human and environmental health associated with chemical use.  Our approach was applied to obtain efficient regulation of DBCP residues in ground water.  Pest control policies in cotton emphasized the use of consistent measures of risk estimates that enable a more realistic comparison of performance and consistency of policies.

We developed a quantitative approach to assess the market effect of pesticide regulation, in particular, pesticide cancellations.  This approach relies on agronomical estimates on thew impacts of proposed policies at various locations, recognized heterogeneity across regions, and obtained aggregated impacts of proposed policies.  With this approach, we were able to show that in many cases cancellation of the use of chemicals may reduce the well-being of consumers because of higher prices and negatively affect the welfare of producers who use the chemicals but improve the well-being of other producers.  In some situations, cancellation of chemical use may impact the U.S. economy through its impact on its export markets. 

A major application of this approach was in the assessment of the proposal of the Big Green.  On November 6, 1990, California voters were given the chance to enact Proposition 128, the California Environmental
Protection Act (Big Green).  This initiative promised significant statewide environmental reform in the regulation of pesticides, the control of coastal pollution, and the reduction of greenhouse gases and chlorofluorocarbon emissions.  Big Green also called for a new state agency to ensure that these and other environmental reforms were implemented effectively.  We showed that most of the economic impact will be felt by consumers due to high prices.  On average, farmers were not expected to lose even though some groups were expected to lose significantly, but we also found that there was a small but significant probability that the loss to agriculture from the ban was very significant and that may explain its resistance to this policy. 

We argued that banning pesticides may not be efficient, and instead that we suggest using a financial incentive or discriminatory regulation that aim to use chemicals in situations where the economic benefits exceed their negative cost.  When the cost of using chemicals reflect the social side effects, producers are likely to be more careful, adopt more precise application technologies, and not use chemicals in situations were their benefits are low.