Integrated Food Crop Pest Management Program in Indonesia: A Computable General Equilibrium AnalysisThe excessive use of pesticides in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s caused serious environmental problems such as acute and chronic human pesticide poisoning, animal poisoning and contaminated agricultural products, destruction of both beneficial natural parasites and pest predators, and pesticide resistance in pests_ To overcome these environmental problems, since 1989 the Indonesian government has actively adopted a strategy of integrated pest management (IPM).
During the first few years of the IPM program's implementation, the program has been able to help farmers reduce the use of pesticides by approximately 56 percent, and increase yields by approximately 10 percent. However, economic literature, which analyzes the impact of the IPM program on household incomes and national economic performance, is very limited.
The first goal of this research is to build a Computable General Equilibrium model that includes various links from pesticide use in agricultural sectors to environmental problems, particularly human health problems, and the links from environmental problems to societal costs and the effectiveness of production activities. The second goal of this research is to analyze the impact of the IPM program on Indonesian economic growth and household incomes for different socioeconomic gaups.
The output of the first year of this research is a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) which records the impact of pesticide on human health. After the SAM is available, in the second year of this research, this research will concentrate in building a computer program for the Computable General Equilibrium.