Abstract
Monitoring pesticide use is essential for assessing farming practices and the risks associated with the use of pesticides. Currently, there are neither consolidated, public data available on glyphosate use in Europe, nor a standardized categorization of its major uses. In this study, data on glyphosate sales and use in Europe were collected from multiple sources and compiled into a dataset of the agricultural use of glyphosate from 2013 to 2017. The survey shows that glyphosate represented 33% of the herbicide volume sold in Europe in 2017. One third of the acreage of annual cropping systems and half of the acreage of perennial tree crops received glyphosate annually. Glyphosate is widely used for at least eight agronomic purposes, including weed control, crop desiccation, terminating cover crops, terminating temporary grassland and renewing permanent grassland. Glyphosate use can be classified into occasional uses—i.e., exceptional applications, triggered by meteorological conditions or specific farm constraints—and recurrent uses, which are widespread practices that are embedded in farming systems and for which other agronomic solutions may exist but are not frequently used. This article proposes a framework for the precise monitoring of glyphosate use, based on the identification of the cropping systems in which glyphosate is used, the agronomic purposes for which it is employed, the dose used and the rationale behind the different uses.
Highlights
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world [1,2]
This volume accounted for 18% of the 4,105,783 t of pesticide active ingredients (a.i.) and 92% of the 814,614 t of herbicide a.i. sold to the agricultural sector globally in 2014, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [4,5]
As shown by Benbrook [3], multiple factors have driven the increase in glyphosate use at the global level, including an increase in the area treated with the herbicide, the marketing of glyphosate-tolerant crop varieties, the increasing number of authorized glyphosate uses in different crops, the adoption of no-till and conservation tillage systems which rely on herbicides, the declining market price of glyphosate [6] and new application methods
Summary
The global sales volume was estimated at 825,804 t in 2014—of which 746,580 t (90%) were used by the agricultural sector [3], the rest being used in non-crop areas. This volume accounted for 18% of the 4,105,783 t of pesticide active ingredients (a.i.) and 92% of the 814,614 t of herbicide a.i. sold to the agricultural sector globally in 2014, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [4,5]. Glyphosate is used extensively both in annual cropping systems and in perennial crops
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