Pesticide usage monitoring in the United Kingdom

The last decade has seen an increasing requirement throughout the United Kingdom (UK) for accurate, timely information on pesticide usage to satisfy government legislation and provide data as part of the registration and review process of pesticides. These data, collected by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's Pesticide Usage Survey Group (PUSG), provide information on current and past usage patterns and allow the impact of use on the environment, operator and consumer to be more accurately assessed from actual usage patterns rather than worst case scenarios. Surveys of all crops grown commercially throughout the UK are undertaken at regular intervals using fully stratified samples of farmers and growers. Data are raised to provide national estimates of use but individual data sets can be derived from the sample. As such, the data are therefore also particularly suited to incorporation into probabilistic risk assessments. The methodologies used by the PUSG and some example data sets from a recent survey of arable crops are given.