Despite continued criticism of the pesticide industry, the EPA’s own research shows that improved products and more effective pesticide use is looking out for the environment.
The battle over the use of pesticides is one that will never entirely disappear. As long as there are crops to grow in fields, insects to control in homes and weeds to eliminate in yards, there will be a need for pesticide products. And, as long as there are people using various pesticides on a daily basis, there will be those people and those groups who believe pesticides actually injure the environment that the applicators of the pesticides believe they protect.
One result of this seemingly endless battle has been the enactment of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) in 1996. The anti-pesticide faction triumphed over pesticide applicators when this Act passed because this controversial legislation calls for the re-evaluation of all 9,000+ pesticide products that have already been registered for use by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
One cause for concern among anti-pesticide groups is the sheer volume of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and other control products applied over the course of time. While each particular application of a product may in and of itself be essentially harmless, this passionate part of the battle argues that the cumulative effect of all of these applications over time may represent a much more significant effect.
For this reason and many others, EPA closely tracks annual pesticide sales and use to better understand the actual volume of the pesticide products that goes into the marketplace over the course of a year. The most recently released Pesticides Industry Sales and Usage report provides market estimates for the years 1996 and 1997. The report is "devoted to economic aspects of the pesticide industry rather than health and environmental aspects," but the information is still informative from a pesticide consumption standpoint.
In the introduction to the data, Marcia Mulkey, director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, writes "pesticide usage during 1996 and 1997 was not greatly different from recent prior years." Data in the report showed that agricultural applications of pesticides accounted for more than three-quarters of the country’s total pesticide use, and the remaining amount of pesticides applied was split fairly evenly between homeowners and industry professionals.
Mulkey also noted that future versions of the report will attempt to identify the impact of FQPA on pesticide use.
Key areas of the report of interest to the turfgrass industry are presented here, but the entire report is available on the Internet at www.epa.gov/oppbead1/pestsales, or you can call EPA at 513/489-8190 to request a copy.
THE BIG PICTURE. In its report, EPA notes that "pesticides play a vital role in controlling agricultural, industrial, home/garden and public health pests." There are roughly 890 active ingredients registered as pesticides, and about 4.5 billion pounds of these active ingredients are applied annually. And, clearly, pesticides are big business in the United States.
- Annual expenditures by users of pesticides totaled $11.9 billion in 1997.
- 70 percent of pesticide expenditures was for agricultural use, which equates to roughly $4,400 per farm.
- The U.S. total of $11.9 billion equals roughly $44 per capita.
- The average U.S. household spent about $20 for pesticides applied by the homeowner (does not count expenditures for pesticides applied by lawn care or pest control professionals to the home).
And the numbers that comprise the pesticide industry are equally significant:
|
Major Pesticide Manufacturers |
17 |
|
Other manufacturers |
100 |
|
Formulators |
2,200 |
|
Distributor establishments |
17,000 |
|
Farms using pesticides |
940,000 |
|
*Professional users |
40,000 |
|
Certified Commercial Applicators |
375,000 |
|
Households using pesticides |
74 million |
* Includes turf and ornamental professionals, right-of-way contractors, structural pest control professionals, aquatic management firms, institutional applicators and industrial applicators.
The findings about reduced pesticide use in the professional market are good news for the turf industry. "In non-agricultural sectors, pesticide use reached a peak of about 300 million pounds in 1979 and has since declined fairly consistently to about 200 million pounds annually in recent years," according to the report. The study showed that herbicide use in non-agricultural settings dropped from 85 million pounds of active ingredient in 1979 to 49 million pounds of active ingredient in 1997. Total pesticide application over this same time span fell almost 40 percent from 243 million pounds of active ingredient to 151 million pounds.
The report also noted that most of these reductions have occurred in the professional market as the homeowner market use has grown slightly over the last two decades. In fact, nearly three-quarters of U.S. homeowners used some form of pesticide product in 1996 with about 56 percent of them using an insecticide, 38 percent using a fungicide and 14 using an herbicide. The smaller areas required for an insecticide application vs. an herbicide application, however, resulted in homeowners purchasing 49 million pounds of herbicide active ingredient (up roughly 35 percent since 1979) compared to 17 million pounds of insecticide active ingredient (down by nearly half since 1979).
HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. One of the initiatives that all basic pesticide manufacturers have focused on of late has been the development of more environmentally friendly pesticides. EPA has encouraged the development of these products by offering a greatly accelerated registration process for pesticides found to present minimal impact on the environment, which is crucial to the pesticide manufacturers who have a 17-year patent on a product before their competitors can begin producing it as well. Recent fast track introductions to the turf market have included MACH 2 from RohMid, Conserve from DowAgroSciences and Compass from Novartis Turf & Ornamental.
Not surprisingly, herbicides represent the largest portion of pesticide sales in the non-agricultural market – a total of roughly $743 million was spent on herbicides for industrial/commercial/governmental uses in 1997. (Agricultural herbicide expenses totaled roughly $5.6 billion in 1997.) Meanwhile, roughly $576 million was spent on insecticides and $144 million on fungicides that year. These dollars went to purchase about 49,000 pounds of herbicide active ingredient in 1997, 30,000 pounds of insecticides and 20,000 pounds of fungicides.
Overall, there has been a significant increase in the number of pesticide products registered in the latter part of the 1990s. From 1990-1993, there were 51 new pesticides registered. From 1994-1997, however, that number skyrocketed to 113. Registration activity like this hasn’t been witnessed since the mid-1970s. In fact, there were 56 insecticides alone registered from 1994-1997. This dramatic increase would seem to validate the prediction of many lawn care industry observers that pesticide applicators will find themselves using a greater variety of products in the future as new products that are less impactful on the environment also control a fewer number of pests.
WHAT’S GOING DOWN. Based on reports from a variety of sources, EPA is also able to estimate the quantities of specific products being applied each year. Following are the nine most commonly used pesticides by the professional firms listed in the chart above:
|
Pesticide |
Millions of Pounds |
|
1. 2,4-D |
16-18 |
|
2. Glyphosphate |
9-12 |
|
3. Copper Sulfate |
5-7 |
|
4. Chlorpyrifos |
4-7 |
|
5. MSMA |
4-5 |
|
6. Methyl Bromide |
3-6 |
|
7. Pendimethalin |
2-4 |
|
8. Chlorothalonil |
2-4 |
|
9. Malathion |
2-3 |
Among the approximately 40,000 companies making non-agricultural pesticide applications, there were just shy of 375,000 certified pesticide applicators as of Oct. 30, 1997. Due to its climate, the southeastern part of the country (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee) is home to the highest number of these pesticide applicators – more than 76,000. The next most highest population of professional pesticide applicators (65,719) resides in the upper Midwest – Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota – which is followed by California, Nevada and Arizona with 50,623 certified applicators. The fewest number of pesticide applicators, only 9,454, reside in the New England area of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The author is Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.
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