Optimal pest management: A reproductive pollutant perspective

Abstract

Regarding pests as reproductive pollutants, pest management can be considered as an optimal stock management problem similar to that faced in fishery and forestry. Taking this view, an optimal control model with N heterogeneous farmers sharing a mobile pest is developed to investigate the conventional pest management tactic on a farm-by-farm basis and the innovative area-wide pest management tactic on a regional basis. The study results indicate that area-wide pest management (APM) is superior to farm-by-farm pest management in the presence of pest movement. We proceed to examine the stability of the cooperative solution under APM by formulating the pest management problem as a repeated game of infinite duration. The results suggest that a one-off pest suppression campaign can be a practical strategy for initiating APM programs.