This data release provides state-level estimates of annual agricultural use of pesticide compounds by major crop or crop group for states in the conterminous United States, for the time period 1992-2017, compiled from data used to make county-level estimates by means of methods described in Thelin and Stone (2013) and Baker and Stone (2015). The source of these data is the same as the published county-level pesticide use estimates for 1992-2009 (Stone, 2013), estimates for 2008-2012 (Baker and Stone, 2015), and estimates for 2013-17 (Wieben, 2019). County-level by-crop estimates are not published because of the increased uncertainty in estimating the geographic distribution of compounds applied to specific crops. High-acreage crops (corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, and alfalfa) are individually aggregated to state level while low-acreage crops are combined into groups (vegetables and fruit, orchards and grapes, pasture and hay, and other crops) prior to aggregating to the state level.
This data release contains two tables of state-level annual agricultural pesticide use estimates by crop or crop group (one for low estimates and one for high estimates) and associated metadata. These data were used to produce annual time-series charts for individual pesticide by crop or crop group for 1992-2017 available on the Pesticide National Synthesis Project (PNSP) webpage: https://doi.org/doi:10.5066/F7NP22KM.
Data for some compounds were missing from the version 1 estimates. Pesticide use estimates for compounds with missing data have been updated in version 2.0.
First posted November 27, 2019
Revised May 28, 2020, ver. 2.0
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 http://doi.org/10.3133/ds907.
Stone, W.W., 2013, Estimated annual agricultural pesticide use for counties of the conterminous United States, 1992-2009: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 752, 1 p. pamphlet, 14 tables, accessed July 12, 2015, at http://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/752/.
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/.
Wieben, C.M., 2019, Estimated Annual Agricultural Pesticide Use for Counties of the Conterminous United States, 2013-17 (ver. 2.0, May 2020): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9F2SRYH.
