New Additions

Putting an Environmental Cost to Pesticide Use with Environmental Impact Quotients
Joe Kovach
IPM Program
Ohio State University
Wooster, OH

Abstract :
Recently, the US General Accounting Office published a report on the improvements that are needed to further promote IPM in the USA. One recommendation from this report was that a method needed to be developed to the measure the environmental and economic progress of IPM programs. The purpose of this presentation is to address this need by proposing a method that develops a "common currency" that can be used by IPM practitioners to measure and communicate both the environmental and economic impact of different pesticide and IPM programs. This new pesticide price model integrates three previously published environmental and pesticide use/risk studies. It estimates the environmental cost or price of over 200 different pesticides by totaling each pesticide's off-target impact costs (i.e. aquatic, avian, honey bee, groundwater, farmworker, beneficial insect and consumer). By knowing the environment cost of each kg (lb) of active ingredient of pesticide, comparisons between individual pesticides and/or IPM programs can be more easily communicated to growers, policy makers and the general public.