The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) keeps records of pesticide use in the...

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) keeps records of pesticide use in the United States, and you can access those records by going to www.pestmanagement.info/nass/app_usage.cfm. This data source is incomplete and not up to date, but it is the only public monitoring source for chemicals whose use is rapidly increasing, expanding, and diversifying worldwide and in the United States. Both environmental and economic impacts of these uses are substantial. Visit the NASS site, and observe how many pesticides are listed. Monitoring the environmental and health effects of this many compounds is clearly a challenge, but this diversity helps growers respond to the “pesticide treadmill” effect. Refer to your readings to recall what the term pesticide treadmill means.

Then look at some of the crops on which growers use the dominant pesticides?glyphosate, atrazine, alachlor, or 2,4-D (for reference, see fig. 10.18). You can experiment with graphing and mapping, as well as tabular reports on uses of these pesticides.

You can download and analyze these data yourself, but to make it easier we have provided an Excel file with a set of this data that is organized for easy graphing (below graph). Acquire this file by going to www.mhhe.com/cunningham12e. Find material for Chapter 10 to locate and download the Data Analysis Excel file. The file contains directions for graphing different crops on which Glyphosate (“Roundup”), the most abundantly used herbicide in the United States, is applied.

Graph data for the different crops, as described in the file, and answer the questions below.

What types of information do the two vertical axes represent?

FIGURE 10.18 Usage of the top five pesticides in the United States. All are herbicides applied to soy, corn, or wheat, or to lawns, except metam sodium, a soil fumigant used mainly on ground crops such as carrots, potatoes, peppers, and strawberries. Source: USDA, 2009.