Abstract
Modern agriculture must balance crop productivity with sustainability, especially under policies like the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, which aimed to cut pesticide use by 50% by 2030. However, farmers remain reluctant to reduce pesticides due to concerns about efficacy and profitability. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) offers a structured approach by combining biological, cultural, and chemical controls. Natural enemies and biopesticides show promise as alternatives to chemical pesticides, yet adoption remains limited and economic frameworks to optimize their use yet to be developed. This paper examines when farmers can reduce pesticide by using commercial natural enemies or biopesticides. We develop a bioeconomic model incorporating farmers’ decisions on natural enemy augmentation and biopesticide use. The model extends the Natural Enemy-Adjusted Economic Threshold (NEET) framework and integrates more realistic non-linear predation dynamics. The results indicate that biopesticides must be used alongside commercial natural enemies to achieve cost-effectiveness comparable to conventional pesticides. Furthermore, a 50% subsidy on commercial natural enemies is required for them to match the cost-effectiveness of conventional pesticides. These findings do not account for the avoided negative externalities of conventional pesticides. Additionally, the linear predation assumption that is common in the bioeconomics literature leads pesticides to be triggered too soon.