text: Push-pull agriculture leads to beneficial economic outcomes on the level of individual smallholder and subsistence farmers through larger income streams coming from the sale of surplus grain, desmodium seeds, fodder, and milk.  Economic study has calculated the return on investment of push-pull methods for farmers to be over 2.2 as compared to 1.8 for pesticide use, and .8 for monocrop. Although startup costs of push-pull technology are highly variable due to the requirements of labor to plant desmodium and Napier grass and purchase of these seeds, costs significantly decline in following growing years. Push-pull technology has also been seen to help boost local economies. Because these farmers have more income, they are able to spend money in their local economy which boosts the standards of living and prosperity of the community at large.
  The primary economic opponents to such methods are large multinational corporations such as Monsanto and others that produce seasonal inputs such as chemical pesticides, fertilizers and high-yield seeds that require such inputs.
  After controlling for extraneous maize yield determinants, it was found that there was a 61.9% maize yield increase with a 15.3% increase in the cost of maize production and a 38.6% increase in the average net income brought in from maize.
  In households where push-pull technology has been adopted in Kenya, increased economic earnings have been associated with more years of education, improved access to rural institutions, and attendance to a larger number of field days when compared with households that have not adopted the technology. Additionally, if adoption of the technology continues at the current rate of 14.4%, a reduction of 75,077 people considered poor could be expected in a situation where the local economies remain closed, and 76,504 fewer people could be expected to be considered poor if the economies were open.