New York's integrated pest management program generated an estimated $2.19 in benefits for every taxpayer dollar invested over its first 40 years, according to a new Cornell economic analysis.
The study estimated benefits of up to $143.7 million in 2024 dollars, using evidence from 19 studies of crop production practices supported by the program.
The findings were published Nov. 2 in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management. Researchers calculated savings from practices that help growers monitor pests and time treatments, then scaled the results using crop acreage and the years those practices were available.
Integrated pest management combines information about weather, pest biology and crop conditions to decide when intervention is needed. The approach can replace routine spraying schedules with more targeted treatment decisions.
Allan Pinto, the study's first author, joined Cornell's program in 2023 as its first economist. He worked with program director Alejandro Calixto and other researchers to estimate the economic return on public investment.
The analysis covers only activities for which the team could obtain usable economic evidence. It does not measure every crop, every program service or all environmental benefits.
That makes the estimate conservative in the authors' view, but the result also depends on assumptions about adoption and how much of the savings can be credited to the program.
Researchers tested those assumptions. Cornell said the program still broke even in scenarios that assumed only half of the relevant acreage adopted the practices, or that half of the measured benefit should be attributed elsewhere.
The analysis did not put a dollar value on benefits such as reduced environmental harm or slowing the development of pesticide resistance. Those effects can matter to growers and communities even when they are difficult to quantify.
The program's Network for Environmental and Weather Applications, known as NEWA, uses weather observations and pest life-cycle information to help farmers forecast risks and make treatment decisions.
Cornell described examples in which better monitoring allowed growers to cut the number of sprays sharply. Such examples illustrate how the system works; they are not a finding that every New York farm achieved the same reduction.
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The researchers separately estimated value associated with the program's website and NEWA at $210,000 to $632,000. They did not include those estimates in the main benefits total because assigning the value directly to the program was difficult.
The program's roots reach back to efforts to reduce reliance on broad pesticide use, including federal work in the 1970s and Cornell AgriTech partnerships with apple growers. New York established program funding in its state budget in 1985.
The team plans to examine the economic value of community integrated pest management work and develop tools that other states could use for similar evaluations.
Co-authors included Maria Oviedo, David Lane and Dyson School economist Miguel Gomez. Cornell's integrated pest management program and the state Department of Agriculture and Markets supported the research.
The journal study and Cornell's report describe the analysis and its limitations.
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