Economic Impact of Introducing Rotations on Long Island Potato Farms

Potatoes have been grown continuously on many Long Island (New York) fields. Environmental concerns have raised questions about the continued usage of this practice. A farm-level linear programming model was used to investigate the economic impacts of crop rotations which result in reduced potato acreage. Crop rotations (an Integrated Pest Management tactic) reduced total pesticide use, but also reduced returns above variable costs as successively stringent rotation requirements were forced into the solution. The crop rotations which caused the least effect on income were identified.