Balancing Health and Sustainability: Optimizing Investments in Organic vs. Conventional Agriculture Through Pesticide Reduction

This paper investigates the trade-offs between organic and conventional farming methods, focusing on their respective impacts on health, environmental sustainability, and economic outcomes. Our contributions are twofold. First, we develop a theoretical model based on an optimal control problem to examine the dynamic allocation of investments in organic versus conventional agriculture. This model incorporates critical social factors such as the environmental and health costs associated with the use of pesticides in conventional farming and the long-term social benefits of organic practices. Second, we estimate the key parameters of the model using French data on pesticide levels in groundwater and the costs of the treatments required to ensure safe and potable water for the population. The empirical results provide insights into the economic and environmental implications of shifting investments towards organic farming. By comparing theoretical and empirical results, key insights have been identified, regarding the interplay between the social costs of pesticide exposure, its spatial distribution, and the design of mitigation efforts. The optimal policy suggested, underscores the necessity of targeting localized areas of high pesticide concentration with intensified effort to minimize adverse health and environmental impacts. Furthermore, our model advocates for a balanced distribution of effort and emphasizes the efficacy of early intervention strategies. Failure to adhere to optimal effort levels could significantly increase future effort, and so the costs, required to achieve policymaker targets.