|
Roanoke, IN | Actually this attached USDA report is more relevant to the conversation. It is broken down and we can single out corn & beans instead of all agriculture pesticides. I was thinking 1996 on beans, but we can agree on introduction in the mid 90's. I think the missing data from the most recent 7 years is very important to this conversation. Obviously RR saved a lot of herbicide application IN THE BEGINNING! It looks like for about 10 years from the data. I vividly remember that time period and RR beans with glyphosate only were awesome! Not the case today. On the BT side of things pesticide use went up exponentially as I alluded to above, unless you conveniently forget to include it as a pesticide. Study the sales of soil applied insecticide and herbicides other than glyphosate in the past 10 years and that will also give you an indication of where the trend is headed.
Also there is a certain fallacy in only looking at pesticide use in lbs/ac active ingredients. Different pesticides have different use rates. If herbicide A has a use rate of .25lbs a/i per acre and we then switch to using herbicide B and it has a use rate of .15lbs a/i per acre what is the difference? A/I per acre has nothing to do with efficacy, safety, or environmental impact when comparing different chemistries. The EPA & USDA reports would show that herbicide use had dropped, but really it hadn't. It would not have the same effect as cutting the use rate of herbicide A to .15 from .25, but their #'s would show equivalency. What if we added herbicide C at a use rate of .10 a/i per acre to herbicide B. We are now doubling our herbicidal efforts, but still only using .25 a/i acre and the reports would show a flat line of use.
Farm Babe was talking about the # of herbicides used, not a/i per acre. But the trend is headed back up, not down, since the introduction of GMO traits and she is incorrect that only 1 or 2 are needed to get the job done.
Here's some charts from the report and one I made from the data on historic pesticide a/i use per acre corn & beans.
 (pesticide use 1960-2008.JPG)
 (pesticide use by crop.JPG)
 (pesticide chart.JPG)
 (pesticide use per acre.JPG)
Attachments
----------------
 USDA pesticide 1960-2008.pdf (5073KB - 75 downloads)
pesticide use 1960-2008.JPG (58KB - 55 downloads)
pesticide use by crop.JPG (34KB - 45 downloads)
pesticide chart.JPG (54KB - 51 downloads)
pesticide use per acre.JPG (21KB - 45 downloads)
| |
|
Farm Babe needs to stick with cute animal pics
