Die Bodenkultur - Journal for Land Management, Food and Environment

K. Peker:

Comparative Economic Analysis between Chemical Pesticides and Bacterium Using in Apricot Production

Summary

The use of pesticides in crop production could threaten human health and also increases the production costs. Bacterium is a viable and cost-effective alternative to the use of pesticides. The use of bacterium as a substitute for pesticides is a development in agriculture, which has gained much more importance in recent years in Turkey. It is new and still at the trial stage in apricot production in Turkey. In this study, cost and benefit analysis of the use of bacterium-Bacillus subtilis OSU-142 and pesticides in apricot production was performed in Malatya province, which provides more than half of the apricots produced in Turkey, was selected as the study area. According to the study results, the cost per unit of apricot production (one kilogram) was calculated to be $ 1.36 with pesticide application and $ 0.94 with bacterium application. Each dollar of cost produces $ 0.91 of revenue in pesticide use; this figure is $ 1.31 in the case of bacterium use in apricot production. Key words: apricot; chemical pesticides; bacterium; environment; cost and benefit analysis.