Introduction

The Industries Assistance Commission of Australia, in their review of the economics of agricultural research using the CSIRO Division of Entomology as an example, concluded that the majority of projects were ‘dry holes’ in that they yielded negligible economic return, but that it only needed one or two successes to pay for the entire operation of a large research agency over a decade or more (Marsden et ah, 1980). Biological control was a major area considered in that review and these two principal conclusions are as true for this field as they are for the general case. Less than half of biological control projects produce substantial success, but those that do are the really big winners.

We would like to review briefly the history of application of economics to biological control in Australia and then consider the benefits and costs in a more general sense. There is nothing unique about biological control from an economic viewpoint, though it does have some special properties that assist the process and increase benefits, and others that require particular consideration.

The examples that we propose to cover concern classical (inoculative) or inundative biological control where the natural enemies have been selected from naturally occurring species or biotypes. We do not cover the release of genetically improved natural enemies, whether modified by conventional methods or by genetic engineering. Many of the concepts we canvas are equally relevant to the ‘new technologies’ in terms of assessing the costs of research, the likelihood of success and the ensuing economic benefits. Even the risks are not dissimilar in nature.