Pesticide use

Pesticide use: an indicator of increased agriculture

Mineral fertiliser and heavy pesticide use go hand in hand with production-oriented agriculture. Stripping out island countries with little usable farming land such as Barbados, Mauritius, Cyprus, and Malta, the highest annual pesticide use (12 to 20 kg/ha of arable land) occurs in Latin America (Costa Rica, Colombia, Belize) and Asia (South Korea and Japan). The next-highest users (6 to 8 kg) are European countries with fairly limited arable land areas and intensive farming practices (the Netherlands, Slovenia, Belgium, United Kingdom), as well as Chile and Turkmenistan.

Of the large-population countries, pesticide use is fairly low in the United States (2.5 kg/ha of arable land), Brazil (1.2) and India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (0.4 to 0.5). It is almost nought in Indonesia (0.1).

Almost all developing countries report very low pesticide use (under 0.3 kg/ha arable land), especially in Africa but also in some Eastern European countries (Albania, Latvia, Lithuania) and Russia, all countries accounting for a sizeable portion of the world’s arable land areas. The issue of curbing pesticide use by planting resistant strains of plants is still controversial given the inherent use of GM strains that it would imply.