Damage from Secondary Pests and the Need for Refuge in China

Because Bt technology targets only bollworm populations, secondary pest populations have slowly eroded the benefits of Bt technology in China. Stochastic dominance tests based on primary household data from 1999–2001 and 2004 in China provide strong evidence that secondary pests have completely eroded all benefits from Bt cotton cultivation. Refuge, while currently used to prevent Bt resistance in the United States, could be used to control secondary pest populations by increasing their exposure to lethal toxins. We show that such a strategy would be profitable in China.

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