Identifying and characterizing pesticide use on 9,000 fields of organic agriculture

Abstract

Notwithstanding popular perception, the environmental impacts of organic agriculture, particularly with respect to pesticide use, are not well established. Fueling the impasse is the general lack of data on comparable organic and conventional agricultural fields. We identify the location of ~9,000 organic fields from 2013 to 2019 using field-level crop and pesticide use data, along with state certification data, for Kern County, CA, one of the US’ most valuable crop producing counties. We parse apart how being organic relative to conventional affects decisions to spray pesticides and, if spraying, how much to spray using both raw and yield gap-adjusted pesticide application rates, based on a global meta-analysis. We show the expected probability of spraying any pesticides is reduced by about 30 percentage points for organic relative to conventional fields, across different metrics of pesticide use including overall weight applied and coarse ecotoxicity metrics. We report little difference, on average, in pesticide use for organic and conventional fields that do spray, though observe substantial crop-specific heterogeneity.

Assessing farmland suitability for agricultural machinery in land consolidation schemes in hilly terrain in China: A machine learning approach

“…We established an integrated framework to assess the suitability of FCAM, including natural resource endowment, accessibility of agricultural machinery, socioeconomic level, and ecological limitations. It is distinct from existing assessment frameworks that focus only on the physical attributes of farmland (e.g., terrain characteristics, soil quality, and availability to agricultural infrastructure) ( Abubakari et al., 2016 ; Du et al., 2018 ; Keller et al., 2019 ), and it recognizes that FCAM, as the outcome of reciprocal relationships between farmland and agricultural machinery, is deemed important to understand both how farmland consolidation satisfies the multiple demands of the operation of agricultural machinery and how ecological limitations affect FCAM ( Wiggering et al., 2006 ; Larsen et al., 2021 ). Accordingly, a systematic methodology has been introduced to assess the suitability of FCAM in hilly terrain by using a machine learning approach.…”

Is Organic Food Good for Health and the Environment?

“…Around 40% of arable land is used by agriculture worldwide, and it is a major cause of environmental problems. However, in the past few decades, shown in agricultural production produced tremendous gains, but malnutrition and hunger are still a big challenges to overcome, on the other hand, the demands for agricultural products are continuously rising (Larsen et al, 2021). With this growing demand for agricultural products and pressure on increasing the productivity resulted in the use of pesticides in non-organic farming globally, in spite of the fact that chemicals pollute groundwater and surface water.…”

“…This makes consumers critical of their food choices and the production system of agricultural products that may impact the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to find ways for sustainable development of agricultural products to support the increasing population and reduce the detrimental impact on human health and the environment (Larsen et al, 2021). In this regard, the areas of organic food farmlands are growing rapidly, in 2019, the areas of farmlands utilized for organic production in the EU's total area increased to 14.6 million hectares.…”

Multifunctional Metal–Organic Framework (MOF)-Based Nanoplatforms for Crop Protection and Growth Promotion

“…To meet the food demand of the escalating global population and ensure the sustained growth of crop yields, pesticides (fungicide, insecticide, herbicide, etc.) and fertilizers have been intensively used and made outstanding contributions over the past century. − Nevertheless, agricultural productivity is continuously challenged by various biotic and abiotic stresses, such as phytopathogen, pest, weed, and nutrient deficiency, leading to the increasing use of agrochemicals. − Moreover, based on the traditional farming methods to administer agrochemicals, many agrochemicals fail to reach the targets but are lost by volatilization, soil leaching, photolysis, and degradation, resulting in a series of adverse effects on the ecological environment and human health, − such as soil degradation, , pesticides resistance, − and water pollution. − Therefore, reducing the application amount of agrochemicals while increasing their effectiveness is highly desired. − Fortunately, introducing advanced materials into the agricultural system provides new technical support for realizing the controlled and targeted delivery of agrochemicals and fulfilling the requirements of high yield, high quality, and sustainable development of modern agriculture. − Over the past few decades, researchers have been committed to designing and constructing advanced nanoplatforms with superior performance to deliver agrochemicals to specific target sites and release them on demand without losing effectiveness. − However, some inorganic/organic nanoplatforms including polymer micelles, carbon-based nanomaterials, metal/metal oxide nanomaterials, lipid nanoparticles, and dendrimers suffer from severe drawbacks of poor biosafety and biodegradability, low cargo loading capacity, complicated synthesis conditions, and high cost, which severely limits their applications in crop protection and growth promotion. , …”