Annual agricultural pesticide use for Midwest Stream-Quality Assessment, 2012-13

This report provides estimates of annual agricultural use of 190 pesticide compounds for counties and selected watersheds of Midwestern States for 2012 and 2013 compiled for subsequent analysis by the National Water-Quality Assessment Program, Midwest Stream-Quality Assessment (MSQA). One of the goals of MSQA is to characterize contaminants at perennial-stream sites throughout the Corn Belt. Evaluating pesticide inputs from agricultural sources will aid in that characterization.

Crop acres for selected Midwestern crops were obtained from the Cropland Data Layer of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service and used in conjunction with GfK Kynetec, Inc. proprietary Crop Reporting District-level pesticide-use data to estimate pesticide use for counties and watersheds. Estimated pesticide use (EPest) values were calculated by using both the “EPest-high” and “EPest-low” methods, the distinction being that there are more counties with estimated pesticide use for EPest-high compared to EPest-low, owing to differing assumptions about missing survey data.

County-level and watershed-level estimates of annual agricultural pesticide use are provided as downloadable, tab-delimited files for both EPest-high and Epest-low. Summary graphs of MSQA watershed-level pesticide use for selected crops are also provided.