Farm chemical use in key watersheds dropped — USDA

By Marc Heller | 07/25/2024 01:30 PM EDT

Though concerns over runoff in waterways persist, the 2022 Census of Agriculture reflects declines in fertilizer and pesticide use.

A farmworker spreads fertilizer on a tomato crop in Hanover County, Virginia.

A farmworker spreads fertilizer on a tomato crop in Hanover County, Virginia, in June 2008. A new Department of Agriculture report found a decline in fertilizer and pesticide use. Steve Helber/AP

Farmers treated less land with manure and pesticides in key watersheds, where they can pose health and environmental risks, between 2017 and 2022, the Department of Agriculture said.

The USDA’s Census of Agriculture, completed every five years, showed that areas from California to the Upper Midwest and Southeast generally had fewer acres covered with manure or treated with pesticides, even as environmental risks connected to those practices persist.

In the South Atlantic and eastern Gulf region, farmers applied manure on 1.9 million acres, the USDA said, or down from 2.1 million acres five years earlier. Acreage treated for insect pests dropped sharply, from more than 9 million in 2017 to 6.1 million acres in 2022. The statistics are in a new report that breaks down census numbers by 20 watersheds.

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The report offers a contrast to environmental groups’ complaints about pesticide use and the danger of manure running off into waterways, but it also reflects the tens of millions of acres across the country that still rely on farm chemicals to boost production and fight off pests and disease. And the declines coincide with a slight decline in overall farm acreage in that five-year period.

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