Farmers, regulators, and researchers rely on pesticide use data to assess the effects of pesticides on crop yield, farm economics, off-target organisms, and human health. The publicly available pesticide use data in the United States do not currently account for pesticides applied as seed treatments. We find that seed treatment use has increased in major field crops over the last several decades but that there is a high degree of uncertainty about the extent of acreage planted with treated seeds, the amount of regional variability, and the use of certain active ingredients. One reason for this uncertainty is that farmers are less likely to know what pesticides are on their seed than they are about what pesticides are applied conventionally to their crops. This lack of information affects the quality and availability of seed treatment data and also farmers’ ability to tailor pesticide use to production and environmental goals.

Hitaj, Claudia, David J. Smith, Aimee Code, Seth Wechsler, Paul D. Esker, and Margaret R. Douglas. Sowing Uncertainty: What We Do and Don’t Know about the Planting of Pesticide-Treated Seed. BioScience 70, no. 5 (2020): 390-403. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/5/390/5805569

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of American Institute of Biological Sciences 2020.

This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.
A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright and which may be freely used by everyone.

Margaret Douglas is a professor of Environmental Studies at Dickinson College.

This published version is made available on Dickinson Scholar with the permission of the publisher. For more information on the published version, visit Oxford Academics Website. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/5/390/5805569?login=false

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