Pesticide Use Survey Program Restored
UCS and other groups joined forces to persuade the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to resurrect a program for surveying pesticide use on U.S. food crops, which had been halted by the Bush administration. Many UCS activists joined the effort by writing letters to help convince the USDA to reinstate this valuable program.
The surveys, conducted by the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), provide the only free, publicly available data on the agricultural chemicals applied to crops. Government agencies, environmental groups, academic scientists, and others use the data for a number of purposes, including evaluating the human health and environmental risks posed by pesticides and comparing the amount of pesticides applied to genetically engineered versus conventional crops.
As the first step in restoring the program, NASS will gather data on fruit and nut crops in fall 2009. If Congress approves the funding specified in the president's 2010 budget, it will restore the program to its full 2007 level, allowing the agency to gather data on vegetables and major row crops.
Read our correspondence with the USDA about this program in the downloadable pdfs above: the 2008 exchange with the Bush administration when the program was cut and the 2009 exchange with the Obama administration at the time of the program's reinstatement.
