Economic thresholds may not be perfect, but they can help you avoid an expensive mistake—paying more money to control an insect problem than you would have lost if you did nothing. By helping you avoid unnecessary pesticide applications, economic thresholds keep money in your wallet and minimize environmental problems.

An economic threshold, or action threshold, is the point at which you need to take action to prevent a pest population from reaching an economically damaging level. The economic threshold is always slightly less than the economic injury level, or EIL—the level at which a pest population is sufficiently high to cause significant crop damage.