Economic impacts of bird damage and management in U.S. sweet cherry production

• Bird damage to fruit crops is a common and costly problem.
• Fruit growers try to minimize damage by using bird management techniques.
• A model to estimate the value of current bird management is applied to survey data.
• Without bird management production of sweet cherries decreases and price increases.
• Use of bird management increases consumer surplus, benefiting consumers.

Bird damage is a common and costly problem for fruit producers, who try to limit damage by using management techniques. This analysis used survey data from producers in five U.S. states to estimate bird damage to sweet cherry (Prunus avium) crops with and without the use of bird management. A partial equilibrium model was applied to the data to estimate the change in the marginal cost of production resulting from disuse of bird management. The model incorporates both decreased yield and elimination of management costs. A welfare analysis was conducted with short and long run supply elasticities derived from time-series data using geometric distributed lags. With no bird management, total surplus in the United States decreases by about $185 to $238 million in the short run and $21 to $29 million in the long run, indicating that bird management has a large impact on cherry production and associated market outcomes, including price and consumption.