Preliminary estimates of annual agricultural use of pesticide compounds in counties of the conterminous United States are compiled by means of methods described in Thelin and Stone (2013) and Baker and Stone (2015). For all States except California, U.S. Department of Agriculture county-level data for harvested-crop acreage are used in conjunction with proprietary Crop Reporting District-level pesticide-use data to estimate county-level pesticide use. Where Crop Reporting District data are not available or are incomplete, estimated pesticide-use values are calculated with two different methods, resulting in a low and a high estimate based on different assumptions about missing survey data (Thelin and Stone, 2013).
Pesticide-use data for California are obtained from the Department of Pesticide Regulation Pesticide Use Reporting (DPR–PUR) database. The California county data are appended after the annual estimation process is completed for the rest of the Nation.
Preliminary estimates may be revised upon availability of updated crop acreages in the Agricultural Census, published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Tables of annual agricultural pesticide use estimates beginning in 1992 are available for download on the Pesticide National Synthesis Project (PNSP) webpage: https://doi.org/doi:10.5066/F7NP22KM.
Beginning 2015, the provider of the surveyed pesticide data used to derive the county-level use estimates discontinued making estimates for seed treatment application of pesticides because of complexity and uncertainty. Pesticide-use estimates prior to 2015 include estimates with seed treatment application. Beginning in 2019, estimates are reported for a reduced number of compounds.
Child items in this folder contain the annual data sets.
References cited:
Baker, N.T., and Stone, W.W., 2015, Estimated annual agricultural pesticide use for counties of the conterminous United States, 2008–12: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 907, 9 p., accessed July 12, 2015, at https://doi.org/10.3133/ds907.
Thelin, G.P., and Stone, W.W., 2013, Estimation of annual agricultural pesticide use for counties of the conterminous United States, 1992–2009: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2013–5009, 54 p., accessed July 12, 2015, at http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2013/5009/.
