Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
51 COLLEGE RD SERVICE BLDG 107
DURHAM,NH 03824
Performing Department
Natural Resources and the Environment
Non Technical Summary
Apple is the major fruit crop in New Hampshire with 1,400 to 1,600 acres harvested on 146 farms, and a farm gate value fluctuating between $7 and 10 million (USDA 2015). Fruit pests and diseases have the potential to cause significant economic losses in apple production. There are currently no commercial varieties that are resistant to insect pests, which are increasingly problematic for Northeast growers. This project will assess the economic value of apple pest resistance through the intercropping of domesticated and heirloom/cider varieties that vary in their susceptibility but also in their market values. We will use farm production cost surveys, a three-year survey, econometric analyses, and computational modeling to (1) estimate apple production costs; (2) assess whether agrobiodiversity reduces pest risk; (3) recommend apple variety mixes and orchard designs that minimize pest infestations while maximizing profits. As a result of this project, we anticipate producing knowledge that reduces farm pesticide use and the associated financial (input costs) and environmental (pollinators) costs, while maximizing apple farm profits.
Animal Health Component
25%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
75%
Applied
25%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
Develop chemical ecology tools and information to support sustainable agriculture by reducing damage by pests in crops such as potatoes, brassicas, cucurbits, apples, blueberries, and sweet corn, while maintaining pollinator health in agricultural systems.
Project Methods
1 Apples enterprise budgetsWe will first develop enterprise budgets (i.e., production cost studies) for apple orchards in New Hampshire. These are a listing of all inputs and associated costs involved in apple production, including fixed and variable costs. These costs, combined with merchantable yield and price scenarios, indicate combinations of yields and prices where a farmer breaks even (see Atallah and Gómez 2013). We will develop these budgets by conducting a literature review of apple enterprise budgets for regions with comparable production systems (scale of production, varieties, etc.) (e.g., VirginiaTech hard cider apple enterprise budget, Farris, Peck, and Groover 2013). We will then hold focus group meetings with New Hampshire apple farmers to modify these enterprise budgets and adapt them to the representative farms in the state.2 Econometric evidence of the impact of agrobiodiversity of yields and production risk.Focus groups. The focus group interviews aim to understand adoptability, which is instrumental to determining the feasibility of a resilient ecological system from the human perspective. Focus group interviews are well suited for revealing the words, concepts, and activities of participants as they relate to complex concepts, such as technology adoption and ecosystem services. We will collect data on growers' awareness and perceptions of the pest control services that can be provided by agrobiodiversity, as well as on the perceptions and desirability of different agrobiodiversity-enhancing systems. We propose to organize several focus groups of six to eight participants each for the different typologies of apple growers. A trained moderator will conduct the focus group interviews using a specially designed script to give every participant the opportunity to share insights and perceptions (Krueger 1994). We will audiotape the sessions and transcribe them to allow for systematic analysis. We will verify the intent of participant comments by a post-focus-group review of the transcripts and audiotape. We will use Atlas software to analyze the group interview data using iterative coding, content analysis (Krippendorff 1980), and thematic matrices. The analysis will enable us to consider the words, context, internal consistency, frequency, and extensiveness (Krueger 1998). In addition, the focus groups will also generate important background data for designing the farmer survey and provide a convenient setting to conduct economic experiments with participants as well as meet the requirements of a field experiment (Harrison and List, 2004). The second half of each focus group session will be devoted to experimental auctions (bidding games) to assess landowners' willingness to accept compensation for adopting multi-variety cropping systems. Uniform price and discriminative price auctions will be tested for their efficiency and suitability to the task of eliciting incentive-compatible bids.Grower survey. Given that growers would directly experience changes in the costs and benefits of agrobiodiversity, the contingent valuation (CV) method is most appropriate as it is capable of capturing passive-use values (Freeman, 2003). The first stage of the econometric model, the adoption decision, will be estimated using a probit regression. The second stage, the quantity decision, will be estimated using a truncated regression (tobit). From this second stage, we will estimate a grower's land allocation (i.e., the area) to an agrobiodiversity production system regime (i.e., cider varieties). A multi-attribute choice framework will be used in order to permit estimation of the marginal willingness to accept compensation for alternative agrobiodiversity production system regimes. We will follow UNH Institutional Review Board guidelines to ensure anonymity. Standard mail survey procedures will follow pre-testing the survey instrument. We will make repeated follow-up contacts to ensure a high response rate (Dillman, 2000). In addition to the CV experiment, the survey will collect data on yields, the number of on-farm apple varieties, distance to and composition of neighboring abandoned apple farms, pest incidence, pesticide use, and fertilizer use per acre. We will use this additional data to estimate the marginal productivity of agrobiodiversity, pesticide use, and fertilizer use or each of the mean, variance, and skewness of apple yields (Di Falco and Chavas (2006).3 Bioeconomics of agrobiodiversity and apple pest resilienceWe propose to follow Atallah et al. (2015) to develop a tree-level, bio-economic simulation model of codling moth (or plum curculio, depending on data availability) infestation in an apple orchard block composed of multiple tree varieties (including yield-maximizing domesticated varieties and pest-resistant non-commercial varieties). The model is stochastic due to the random nature of pest initialization and dispersal, and spatially-explicit due to the critical role of spatial mixing patterns of apple varieties on orchard block-level invasion, opportunity costs (forgone yields or price premium), pest damages, and net revenues. We plan to parameterize the model using estimates from experimental trials in apple orchards in New York and in the NYSAES, estimates from the enterprise budgets (Objective 1), and estimates from the econometric analysis (Objective 3). We plan to conduct computational experiments manipulating the mix and configuration of apple tree varieties in the orchard block.