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Data

Total pesticide use per area of cropland

FAO
See all data and research on:
Agricultural Production

What you should know about this indicator

Item: Pesticides (total) Description: Total pesticides, covering insecticides, fungicides and bactericides (including seed treatments), herbicides, plant growth regulators, rodenticides, mineral oils, disinfectants and others.

Metric: Use per area of cropland

Source
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 14, 2024
Next expected update
March 2025
Date range
1990–2021
Unit
kilograms per hectare

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Pesticides Use database includes data on the use of major pesticide groups (Insecticides, Herbicides, Fungicides, Plant growth regulators and Rodenticides) and of relevant chemical families.

Data report the quantities (in tonnes of active ingredients).

Retrieved on
March 14, 2024
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RP
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Pesticides Use (2024).

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All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Total pesticide use per area of cropland”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “Agricultural Production”. Data adapted from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pesticide-use-per-hectare-of-cropland [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Total pesticide use per area of cropland – FAO” [dataset]. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Pesticides Use” [original data]. Retrieved December 3, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pesticide-use-per-hectare-of-cropland