Abstract
One concern of agriculturalists when regarding climate change involves the effects on pest populations. Climate change may allow pest migration or population expansions which may adversely affect agricultural productivity, profitability and possibly even viability. We examine the effect of current climate variations on the average and variability of U.S. per acre pesticide costs across the U.S. as a proxy for investigating the consequence for pest populations. Empirically, we find that increases in rainfall increases average per acre pesticide usage costs for corn, cotton, potatoes, soybeans, and wheat while hotter weather increases pesticide costs for corn, cotton, potatoes, and soybeans but decreases the cost for wheat. We also investigated the influence of climate on the variability of pesticide costs. There we find that hotter temperatures increase pesticide cost variance for corn, potatoes, and wheat while decreasing it for soybeans. Rainfall increases cause an increase in cost variability for cotton while decreasing it for corn, potatoes, soybeans, and wheat.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Adams, R. M., Hurd, B. H., Lenhart, S., and Leary, N.: 1998, 'Effects of Global Climate Change on Agriculture: An Interpretative Review', Clim. Res. 11, 19–30.
Adams, R. M., McCarl, B. A., Segerson, K., Rosenzweig, C., Bryant, K. J., Dixon, B. L., Connor, R., Evenson, R. E., and Ojima, D.: 1999, 'The Economic Effects of Climate Change on U.S. Agriculture', in Mendelsohn, R. and Neumann, J. E. (eds.), Impact of Climate Change on the United States Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Adams, R. M., Rosenzweig, C., Peart, R. M., Richie, J. T., McCarl, B. A., Glyer, J. D., Curry, R. B., Jones, J.W., Boote, K. J., and Allen, L. H.: 1990, 'Global Climate Change and U.S. Agriculture', Nature 345, 219–224.
Baltagi, B. H.: 1995, Econometric Analysis of Panel Data, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Baltagi, B. H. and Li, Q.: 1995, 'Testing AR(1) against MA(1) Disturbances in an Error Component Model', J. Econometrics 68, 133–151.
Box, G. E. P. and Cox, D. R.: 1964, 'An Analysis of Transformations', J. Roy. Stat. Soc. B 26, 211–243.
Freeman, M. R.: 1992, The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values, Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C.
Honda, Y.: 1985, 'Testing the Error Components Model with the Non-Normal Disturbances', Rev. Econ. Stud. 52, 681–690.
Just, R. and Pope, R. D.: 1978, 'Stochastic Specification of Production Function and Economic Implications', J. Econometrics 7, 67–86.
Just, R. and Pope, R. D.: 1979, 'Production Function Estimation and Related Risk Considerations', Amer. J. Agric. Econ. 61, 277–284.
McCarl, B. A. and Reilly, J.: 2000, 'Chapter 3 Sector Level Economics', in Agricultural Sector Assessment Report for U.S. Global Change Research Program, U.S. National Assessment, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, http://www.nacc.usgcrp.gov/ sectors/agriculture
McCarl, B. A. and Rettig, R. B.: 1983, Influence of Hatchery Smolt Releases on Adult Salmon Production and its Variability', Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 11, 1880–1886.
McCarl, B. A., Chang, C. C., Atwood, J. D., and Nayda, W. I.: 1994, Documentation of ASM: The U.S. Agricultural Sector Model, Unpublished Paper, Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University.
Mendelsohn, R., Nordhaus, W., and Shaw, D.: 1994, 'The Impacts of Global Warming on Agriculture: A Ricardian Analysis', Amer. Econ. Rev. 84, 753–771.
NOAA, United States Historical Climatology Network (HCN) Serial Temperature and Precipitation Data: 1999, http://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ushcn
Patterson, D. T., Westbrook, J. K., Joyce, R. J. V., and Rogasik, J.: 1999, 'Weeds, Insects, and Diseases', Clim. Change 43, 711–727.
Saha, A., Havenner, A., and Talpaz, H.: 1997, 'Stochastic Production Function Estimation: Small Sample Properties of ML versus FGLS', Appl. Econ. 459–469.
United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: 1997, Agricultural Resources and Environmental Indicators, Washington, D.C.
United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service: 1999, Agricultural Chemical Usage (PCU-BB). A Product of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, Agricultural Statistics Board, ERS, U.S. Department of Agriculture, http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/ reports/nassr/other/pcu-bb/#top
U.S. Global Change Research Program: 2000, 'U.S. National Assessment, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change', http://www.nacc.usgcrp.gov
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chen, CC., McCarl, B.A. An Investigation of the Relationship between Pesticide Usage and Climate Change. Climatic Change 50, 475–487 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010655503471
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010655503471