Knowledge and Information as Drivers for Environmental Value in Servicized Agri-food Practices- The case of Servicized IPM Knowledge and Information as Drivers for Environmental Value in Servicized Agri-food Practices- The case of Servicized IPM

Please join us for our next Monday departmental seminar on the 22nd of November from 15:00 to 16:00 at the Porter Auditorium

https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/j/83229921170

PhD seminar Tzruya Chebach

Knowledge and Information as Drivers for Environmental Value in Servicized Agri-food Practices- The case of Servicized IPM

Abstract

The agri-food sector has a direct and substantive impact on the environment. This impact is expected to expand with global trends of population growth, dietary shifts and additional demand for agri-food products from other players. Unsustainable agricultural practices may exacerbate land conversion and habitat loss, wasteful water consumption, soil erosion and degradation, pollution and genetic erosion, including the contribution to environmental feed-backs such as the loss of pollinators due to high input of chemicals in crop protection pesticide application. The biological integrated pest management approach is a "low-input" approach with a potential to significantly reduce the environmental impacts of crop protection through the reduction of chemical input of pesticides applied.

Despite the effectiveness and scope of implementation of this low-input approach, the uptake of biological IPM continues to lag behind its potential. Research and preliminary work done so far demonstrate that sustainable practices in general and IPM specifically require more knowledge, guidance and information sources for their uptake and implementation. In a servicized biological IPM (SIPM), an innovative model in which the value proposition shifts from selling of biological crop protection inputs, to selling a package which includes both inputs and crop protection services, the knowledge and information resources for crop protection change and may provide environmental value. Still, the knowledge and information resources under SIPM and their environmental value have not been studied thus far.

This research explores a case study to explore how the knowledge and information resources change under different business models, a SIPM compared to non-SIPM or a traditional chemical routine. It examines the mechanisms through which the SIPM knowledge and information resources can catalyze the adoption of IPM and improve its implementation. It reveals how knowledge and information resources contribute to the environmental value of SIPM for different stakeholders and different stages of the supply chain. Finally, it proposes a unique knowledge and information resources' framework which analyses how environmental value is generated by the SIPM knowledge and information resources for different agents along the supply chain. It is envisioned that such a framework can contribute towards better decision making, tradeoff analysis and understanding of full life cycle costs and benefits, towards a more sustainable policy and practices in agrifood value chains.