Ex ante Evaluation of Banning Glyphosate in Field Crops : A Scenario based approach
Résumé
Based on a representative survey of 17,000 French field crop in 2017, we estimate the additional costs that would or could be incurred by farmers using glyphosate in the absence of this herbicide.
We combine the definition of scenarios describing possible increase in tillage strategies by farmers' to control weed in the event of glyphosate ban. Using a propensity score weighting approach, we evaluate the cost of a change in agricultural practices described by the scenarios. For the 1.7% of no-till field crop areas, the implementation of a frequent tillage strategy without glyphosate generates an average annual additional cost estimated at 79.83€/ha. About half of this additional cost is for mechanization, a quarter for fuel and a quarter for labor. The extra cost of tillage, 102.86€/ha, is only compensated by a saving of 23.57€/ha on herbicide with glyphosate.