The economic benefit of herbicides in arable farming – with a special focus on glyphosate

Abstract

The increasing food demand is nowadays one of the major challenges for global agriculture. Options to meet this growing demand are, inter alia, higher yields as well as lower crop losses during and post-harvest. The uses of plant protection products is one contribution towards this and indicates several economic advantages; nonetheless, plant protection is frequently perceived negatively in the social discussion. In this regard, global sales of pesticides in general show that there is a highly increasing use of particularly herbicides for the control of weeds in arable farming; the most important active ingredient in this group is glyphosate which is used in conventional agriculture as well as in growing genetically modified organisms outside the European Union (EU). Due to the various application fields of herbicides it is possible to determine an economic benefit in various application areas. This paper represents a literature review about the economic importance of herbicides in general and particularly glyphosate with focus on European arable farming. The results show that the benefit of herbicides can be represented as market, yield, income, climate and energy effects. Thus, numerous short- and long-term benefits result from the use of herbicides. At the same time it becomes evident that alternative weed control measures should not fall into oblivion because the growing application frequency might result in the risk of resistance and finally lead to a lower efficiency.

DOI: 10.5073/JfK.2015.08.01, https://doi.org/10.5073/JfK.2015.08.01