Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of brown-rot control strategies: development of a bio-economic model of brown-rot prevalence in the Dutch potato production chain

Abstract

Quarantine diseases comprise a distinct class of plant diseases. In contrast to other plant diseases, direct losses through crop damage are often limited. Yet, quarantine diseases may have serious economic consequences for a country as they threaten the country’s export of affected crops. In particular for this category of diseases, it is important to design a control strategy that is optimal from an epidemiological as well as an economic point of view. This chapter presents the development of a bioeconomic model to evaluate control strategies in terms of their cost-effectiveness, specified for brown rot in the Dutch potato production chain. The conceptual model consists of two modules: an epidemiological module, which is a stochastic, spatially explicit simulation model that simulates the spread of potato brown rot over all potato-growing farms and fields in the Netherlands, and an economic module, which calculates the total costs of brownrot prevalence, based on the results of the epidemiological model. The model is applied for two brown-rot policy scenarios, which differ in sampling frequency of harvested potato lots but are otherwise similar. The two scenarios are compared with respect to their effectiveness and efficiency. Concerning the costs of controlling brown rot, a low monitoring level appears to be more cost-efficient; however, when including expected export consequences, a high monitoring level may be preferable. The model presented here strongly facilitates the development of an optimal control strategy as it provides insight into the effectiveness of brown-rot control strategies in relation to their costs. Moreover, the introduced modelling concept can be a useful tool in analysing the epidemiological and economic effects of other (quarantine) diseases