Economics of Agricultural Pesticide Resistance in Arthropods

Pesticide resistance among arthropods poses a severe threat to agricultural productivity in the United States and in other areas of the world. While humans have had the ingenuity to develop thousands of pesticides to protect foodstuffs, livestock, and health, the use of these poisons h as triggered a rapid evolutionary response in many target species and some nontarget species of invertebrates, microorganisms, higher plants, and other vertebrates. Exposure to pesticides has led to genetic selection for individuals with the biochemistry or behavior necessary to nullify their toxic effects (31, 70, 76). Despite the frequent development of resistance, the tremendous initial success of agri­ cultural chemicals has created an intractable dependency on their use. Continued development of new compounds to replace old ineffective chemistries has placed agriculture on a pesticide treadmill. The trend toward greater use and higher costs of pesticides as inputs into agricultural production continues both despite and because of exponential increases in resistance (30). Moreover, the threat of pesticide resistance to agricultural productivity is accelerating as the identification and commercial development of new pesti­ cides slows. For some pests the availability of efficacious pesticides is already