Valuing Monitoring Networks for New Pathogens: The Case of Soybean Rust in the United States

We estimate the value of information to farmers from a soybean rust sentinel plot monitoring network. Monitoring provides value over time from farmers learning about their risk of infection and contemporaneously from farmers making more profitable fungicide applications. Optimizing the spatial configuration of the network reveals the value of information plateaus at around $920 million with around 75 sentinel plots. The optimal spatial distribution of sentinel plots differs substantially from historical placements. Optimal sentinel plot placement would have included fewer plots in the Southern United States, where the risk of infection is relatively high, and more in the Midwest, where soybean production is relatively high.