Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

on the other hand we can also estimate a cost function for cultural control, which
would be:
Where:
Y= Cost of cultural control in US$.
Loss
(USD/Manzana)
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Y =
17.7
Potential Economic
Losses
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Infestation Level (%)
Cultural
Control Cost
Figure 11. Losses due to CBB, with cultural control costs.
If we make both equations equal, we can obtain the infestation level (X), at which
losses and costs are the same. In this case it is 2.7%, which is a low infestation level.
So if the farmer allows CBB to rise above this threshold, losses will be higher than the
cultural control cost, and so this control starts to become profitable. However we also
have to consider the dynamics of CBB populations because the ideal control moment
may be long before harvest and even a small population could cause economic damage
some months in the future. In addition, variations in coffee price and/or productivity
can change the threshold percentage. For instance, if the coffee price shifts to
US$65 per quintal, the new threshold will be 1.7%. So CBB management is very
sensitive to change in prices and productivity. The key point here is that in CBB
management the coffee farmers should be aware of the infestation level in order to
take better decisions because economic losses due to this pest can be large. Even so,
interpreting what they have measured is not always easy and this inevitably makes this
sort of technique more difficult to promote.
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