Strategic responses to ban enforcement uncertainty: Antibiotic application decisions in plant agriculture

Abstract

The rise of antibiotic resistance in plant agriculture, combined with limited disease management options and potential antibiotic bans, complicates growers' disease management decision-making. We develop a dynamic model of optimal antibiotic use under uncertainty about ban enforcement in the case of apple fire blight. We find that proactive growers who adjust to anticipated bans overexploit antibiotic efficacy and gain benefits over business-as-usual growers. However, if a government fails to enforce an announced ban, these proactive growers incur losses. The magnitude of these losses is nonlinear with respect to the value of the crop in question. We generate loss estimates for a range of apple crop values and show that regulatory uncertainty can have negative, neutral, or positive unintended impacts on growers.