Drivers of Agricultural Pesticide Use in California: The Role of the Pest Control Advisor (PCA)

The long-established view that conflicts of interest created when pest control advisors (PCAs) receive pesticide sales commissions drive elevated pesticide use is not supported by our analyses. Instead, we see no increases in overall pesticide use, and no increases in use of pesticides targeting arthropods, plant pathogens, or weeds among farmers who use sales PCAs to guide their pest management practices. Farmers working with sales PCAs show a small (8.4%) increase in the use of adjuvants; this is the only support we found for elevated use of agrochemicals by farmers advised by sales PCAs. Instead, we found a pattern of variation in pesticide use by farmers that suggests that risk aversion – and, in particular, the use of pesticides as insurance against devastating outbreaks of arthropod pests or plant pathogens – might motivate small increases in the use of pesticides by farmers guided by PCAs.

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