Economics of Surveillance: a Bioeconomic Assessment of Queensland Fruit Fly
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Regional management of endemic pests of trade significance typically requires a surveillance system, border controls, eradication protocols and conditions for market closure and reopening. An example is the systems for managing Queensland fruit fly (Qfly) in south east Australia where the preferred approach for intensive production areas is an Area Wide Management (AWM) scheme. An AWM, such as the Greater Sunraysia PFA (GSPFA) in northern Victoria and western New South Wales, depends for its recognition amongst trade partners on an effective and credible surveillance system that identifies outbreaks rapidly, notifies exporters of trade restrictions and initiates eradication. These ‘market rules’ are fundamental to the economics of surveillance: they define an outbreak and thus the probability of market closure, the expected time to eradication, and consequent time to market reopening. This paper uses a spatial and dynamic bioeconomic model of Qfly infestation and spread to determine the expected optimal investment in surveillance and eradication capacity of the AWM.Keywords:
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Closure (psychology)
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Fruit flies are recognised as one of the major pests of fruit and vegetable crops worldwide. Potential benefits from fruit fly research include biosecurity benefits from better quarantine surveillance that reduces the costs of an incursion by a damaging exotic pest fruit fly; market access benefits by enabling new fruit exports; and field control benefits from better crop management. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)’s investment in fruitfly research goes back some 25 years to an initial project in Malaysia. Since that time, ACIAR’s continued investment has funded a total of 18 projects ranging across several areas of fruit-fly research, and covering Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Fiji Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Papua New Guinea, Bhutan, Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia. In an impact assessment study of all 18 ACIAR projects, Lindner and McLeod (2008) calculated that the present value (PV) of the total direct investment in these projects by ACIAR and its partners has been A$50.76 million. The PV of total quantifiable realised and prospective benefits that can be attributed to the direct investment by ACIAR and its partners was estimated to exceed A$258.84 million. Of this total PV of quantifiable benefits, A$212.63 million was calculated to accrue to partner-countries. In this paper, the question of why many potential benefits to partner-countries have not been realised to date, and why some future prospective benefits are problematic is examined. While the total value of benefits generated from the investment by ACIAR and its partners is impressive, the pattern of benefits is variable by type of benefit and by country. One of the most important general lessons, widely known but reinforced by the results from this study, is that while successful research project outcomes may be necessary to enable potential benefits, they rarely are sufficient for benefits to be realised. In particular, potential benefits will only be realised if there is uptake of project outputs. While it is recognized that the conditions for uptake are typically well beyond the influence of the researchers both in time and scope, at the time of project formulation, the necessary conditions for adoption of project outputs often seem to receive insufficient attention. Notwithstanding some 20 years of research on the development of low-cost protein bait sprays from brewery waste, the benefits are still essentially prospective and it has not been conclusively demonstrated that the use of these sprays will be widely adopted as a cost-effective alternative to existing practices in developing countries.
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Biosecurity
New guinea
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Australian farmers operate in one of the most risky environment in the world. They have to cope with various sources of risk in their businesses. This paper reports results of two case studies undertaken to examine the issues of farming risks and risk management strategies in Australia. The first case study found that climate variability, financial risk, marketing risk, and per sonal risk were regarded as the major sources of farming risk in the Upper Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. The main management strategies used by farmers included diversifying varieties, minimising tillage, minimising area of risky crops and maximising area of the least-risky crop, having high equity, having farm management deposits and other off-farm investments, and “leaving marketing to experts”. The second case study revealed that climate variability was ranked as the most important source of farming risk in southwest Queensland. This was then followed by financial risks, government policy, and marketing risks. The main management strategies used were enterprise diversification (having predominantly cattle and farming cash crops), conserving moisture, us ing zero till planting, diversified sales (selling only part of the farm’s production at any one time), and having off-farm investments. The paper then attempts to reconcile the two case studies by comparing the results with studies from the United States of America, Canada, Netherlands, and New Zealand.
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Benefit cost analysis is a tried and tested analytical framework that can clearly communicate likely net changes in social welfare from investment decisions to diverse stakeholder audiences. However, in a plant biosecurity context, it is often difficult to predict policy benefits over time due to complex biophysical interaction between invasive species and their hosts. In this paper, we demonstrate how benefit cost analysis remains highly relevant to biosecurity decision-makers using the example of a plant pathogen targeted for eradication from banana growing regions of Australia, banana bunchy top virus. We develop a partial budgeting approach using a stratified diffusion spread model to simulate the likely benefits of eradication to the banana industry over time relative to a status quo policy. Using Monte Carlo simulation to generate a range of possible future incursion scenarios, we predict that eradicating the disease will generate $12.5-23.6 million increased annual revenue for the banana industry. To reduce these benefits to zero would require a bunchy top re-establishment event three years in every four. Sensitivity analysis indicates that eradication benefits can be greatly improved through improvements in disease surveillance and incursion response.
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This thesis is a study on the economic impact of the cattle tick (Boophilus microplus) on producers and government policy in Queensland, Australia. The cattle tick is a major introduced pest, impacting cattle through its parasitic effect and as a vector of tick-fevers. The Queensland Government has an influential role on the status of the cattle tick in the state through the maintenance of the tick line, an artificial boundary dividing Queensland into 'tick free' and 'tick infested' regions. This movement restriction quarantine policy originated in the early twentieth century and has never been subjected to a major economic assessment of its worth vis-a-vis other alternatives.This thesis examines aspects of economic based decision-making in relation to tick management from an individual, government and small collective perspective. For producers in the tick infested region, the treatment of Boophilus microplus represents an interesting case study. Individual producer treatment decisions are not only influenced by the damage caused by the cattle tick itself but also by coexistent pest species such as the buffalo fly (Haemotobia irritans exigua) and long-term complications such as pest resistance to treatment measures. The existing economic pest management literature is heavily orientated on the concept of the economic threshold and applied predominantly to cropping situations. This complicated literature, characterised by definitional confusion, has been examined and extended to provide a conceptual model that incorporates cost-functions unique to livestock pest management, such as the presence of high fixed and application costs. Moreover it also includes the simultaneous examination of pest management involving both multiple pest species and chemical resistance. The model highlights that the presence of these additional factors prescribes potentially divergent producer behaviour from that indicated by the existing literature. Moreover, and specifically in relation to the cattle tick, existing tick management behaviour by Queensland producers where different from the Queensland Government's empirically based individual treatment recommendations, is unlikely to be suboptimal. Rather, with the inclusion of the complicating issues mentioned above, producer tick management is at least optimal in a bounded rationality sense.The role of government intervention in pest management is allocative in nature, based on correcting market failure, especially externalities generated from pest management decisions. Despite the absence of studies on the Queensland Government's tick policy, analyses of New South Wales and international programs have some relevance. The approaches used in these studies are limited by broad averaged per head costing methodologies which fail to convey producer heterogeneity evident both in terms of the tick populations they face and the production and marketing systems they engage. To avoid these problems a SCBA model is developed based on representative producer groups, derived from a survey of stock inspectors, and a biological simulation model that estimates potential tick populations across Queensland's diverse climate and with reference to varying tick management regimes. The design of the model enables a spatially disaggregated comparison of alternatives as well as an examination of the composition of impacts between defined representative producer groups.The SCBA model is used to compare the Queensland Government's current policy with four alternatives ranging from extensive government sponsored eradication programs to the complete removal of the tick line. The removal of the tick would lead to a cost burden of $19.11 M on producers who are currently tick free and would be infested by ticks. The most interesting policy alternative is gradual eradication of the cattle tick through the use of voluntary eradication schemes (VES) - small producer initiated cooperative based eradication schemes which involve minimal government financial support. The results of the SCBA indicate that VES should be encouraged for shires intersecting and south of latitude 25° S.Given the economic advantages of VES as a policy , a practical examination of VES as a collective action mechanism is provided. VES are analogous to an iterated non-cooperative game in which producers over the time-frame of the eradication make decisions as to whether to continue with the scheme or not comply. This issue is accentuated when the level of producer heterogeneity evident in each region is considered. Moreover, the location of non-compliers has an impact on the potential success of the group's eradication effort, leading to potential benefits in partitioning and sequencing in the design of VES.
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Resilience
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Area-wide management of mobile pests offers advantages overuncoordinated farm-by-farm efforts through increased effectiveness of pestcontrol and by reducing the need for pesticides. The literature about area-wide pestmanagement focuses predominantly on the technical aspects of these programs,but tends to neglect the importance of social and institutional aspects. In thisarticle the eight design principles for robust common-pool resource institutionsare applied to industry-driven area-wide pest management. Three case studiesare compared to gain insight about the social and institutional aspects that affectthe success of these undertakings. These cases are focused on Queensland FruitFly control to underpin market access. Growers face a particular challenge togain support from town residents, as backyard fruit trees can be pest breedingspots. The paper illustrates that social aspects – such as heterogeneous incentives,social capital and the ratio between town residents and main beneficiary growers– influence the ease of which the design principles can be applied. Market accessopportunities impact the ratio of cost and benefits to different participants. Thepaper concludes that disconnecting the technical aspects of successful programsfrom the social and institutional aspects in which they are embedded can createunrealistic expectations in socially different regions that intend to replicate theseprograms.
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Australian farmers operate in one of the most risky farming environments in the world. They have to cope with numerous sources of risk including weather uncertainty, variable market prices, and institutional changes in their business management. This paper reports results from two case studies undertaken to examine the issues of farming risks and risk management strategies in Australia. The first case study found that unpredictable weather, financial risk, marketing risk, and personal risk were regarded as the major sources of risk among farmers in the Upper Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. The main risk management strategies used by farmers in that region included diversifying crop varieties, adopting minimum tillage farming practices, minimising the area of risky crops and maximising the area of less-risky crops. They also regarded high equity, having farm management deposits, and other off-farm investments as appropriate risk management strategies, and mostly ‘left marketing to the experts’. The second case study among dryland cropping farmers in southwest Queensland revealed that weather uncertainty was ranked as the most important source of risk in farming in that area. The risk from weather uncertainty was then followed by financial risks, government policy, and marketing risks. The main risk management strategies used by farmers in that area were enterprise diversification, moisture conserving farming practices and using zero till planting, planting at the optimal time, selling only part of the farm’s production at any one time, and investing off-farm. The paper compares the results from these two case studies with results from other studies in the United States of America, Canada, Netherlands, and New Zealand.
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The paper estimates the cost of tsetse control and treatment of trypanosomiasis and the benefits involved, using benefit-cost analysis. It also estimates the extent to which socio-economic characteristics of farmers affect the use of tsetse control techniques, using a maximum Likelihood-Binary Logit model. The results show that farmers will benefit if they invest in control and treatment of the disease. We find that the farmer accepting the challenge that the tsetse fly is a threat to cattle production, the number of dependants the farmer has, and the farmer agreeing that the bite of the tsetse fly causes the nagana disease are significant factors that affect adoption of control practices including the use of prescribed drugs. Our findings suggest that there is potential for farmers’ response and participation in tsetse control activities in Northern Ghana. What seems to be lacking is the relevant information that farmers need to encourage them to participate. We recommend therefore that more extension services be provided livestock farmers to help them derive maximum benefit from disease control practice
Tsetse fly
Binary logit model
Disease Control
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Regional management of endemic pests of trade significance typically requires a surveillance system, border controls, eradication protocols and conditions for market closure and reopening. An example is the systems for managing Queensland fruit fly (Qfly) in south east Australia where the preferred approach for intensive production areas is an Area Wide Management (AWM) scheme. An AWM, such as the Greater Sunraysia PFA (GSPFA) in northern Victoria and western New South Wales, depends for its recognition amongst trade partners on an effective and credible surveillance system that identifies outbreaks rapidly, notifies exporters of trade restrictions and initiates eradication. These ‘market rules’ are fundamental to the economics of surveillance: they define an outbreak and thus the probability of market closure, the expected time to eradication, and consequent time to market reopening. This paper uses a spatial and dynamic bioeconomic model of Qfly infestation and spread to determine the expected optimal investment in surveillance and eradication capacity of the AWM.
Investment
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Australian farmers operate in one of the most risky environment in the world. They have to cope with various sources of risk in their businesses. This paper reports results of two case studies undertaken to examine the issues of farming risks and risk management strategies in Australia. The first case study found that climate variability, financial risk, marketing risk, and personal risk were regarded as the major sources of farming risk in the Upper Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. The main management strategies used by farmers included diversifying varieties, minimising tillage, minimising area of risky crops and maximising area of the least-risky crop, having high equity, having farm management deposits and other off-farm investments, and leaving marketing to experts. The second case study revealed that climate variability was ranked as the most important source of farming risk in southwest Queensland. This was then followed by financial risks, government policy, and marketing risks. The main management strategies used were enterprise diversification (having predominantly cattle and farming cash crops), conserving moisture, using zero till planting, diversified sales (selling only part of the farm's production at any one time), and having off-farm investments. The paper then attempts to reconcile the two case studies by comparing the results with studies from the United States of America, Canada, Netherlands, and New Zealand.
Cash crop
Agricultural diversification
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