HerbiFree

Background

Strategies to prevent and control pest pressure are required to efficiently produce high quality food products. However, the use of pesticides is associated with potential risks to humans and the environment, motivating policy actions in Switzerland and other European countries. Especially the wide spread use of herbicides is increasingly criticized. Possibilities and measures to reduce the use of herbicides are currently investigated by various actors, e.g. from a governmental perspective (reducing risk for human health and the environment), food value chain actors (developing standards to improve the quality of products) and farmers (developing economically viable alternative strategies).

Objectives

The goal of this project is to investigate the implications of a ban or a voluntary removal of i) specific pesticides (such as glyphosate) as well as ii) all herbicides for Swiss Extenso wheat production. Implications of  a herbicide removal in this project comprise effects on: i) weed control strategies, ii) production costs, iii) toxicity of alternative strategies, iv) energy use of alternative strategies, and v) crop yields. In this project, we build-upon Böcker et al. (2017, 2018) and develop a bio-economic model that allows to investigate optimal weed control decisions under different environmental, market and policy scenarios. This model includes a detailed representation of weed pressure as well as weed control strategies and it optimizes strategy choices from a farmer’s perspective. The developed mode will be available as open access at the end of the project.

Contact: Prof. Robert Finger ()

Funding: ETH Foundation

Funding Period: 2018

References

Böcker, T., Britz, W., Finger, R. (2017). Bio-economic model on weed management in maize production. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000184083 >>

Böcker, T., Britz, W., Finger, R. (2018). Modelling the effects of a glyphosate ban on weed management in silage maize production. Ecological Economics 145: 182–193 external page >

Böcker, T., Möhring, N., Finger, R. (2019). Herbicide free agriculture? A bio-economic modelling application to Swiss wheat production. Agricultural Systems 173, 378-392 external page >>

Böcker, T., Finger, R. (2018). Implikationen eines herbizidlosen Extenso-Weizenanbaus in der Schweiz. Agrarforschung Schweiz 9(9): 296-305 external page >>

Blog Contributions

October, 2018: Implikationen eines glyphosat- und herbizidfreien Extenso-Weizenanbaus in der Schweiz external page >>