Pesticide Use and Sales in SK, Canada, and the US

also see  water/SK, wildlife section , neonicotinoids

Tackling the Environmental Challenges of Rising Pesticide Use in Canada   By Dr Christy Morrissey (University of SK), UNBC-NRESI Colloquium Series, 14 October, 2022)  (University of Northern British Columbia colloquium series)    Great one hour video presentation by Dr Morrissey. Worth watching. Lots of graphs with information new to me: like 

• the area treated (Canadian Census of Agriculture) maps for herbicide, fungicide and insecticide. Prairies saw a 58% increase in herbicides, 50% (conservative estimate) insecticides and 412% more fungicides. Also increase in BC, S. ON and everywhere in Canada. (@6 min 40). According to her data, SK uses 80% of all Canadian pesticides.
• Landscape simplification drives higher pesticide use, especially insecticides.
• risk of wetland contamination very high in most of areas of Prairies because of seed treatment, which is also the main reason for increased pesticide use.
• Fungicides in seed treatment are used to potentiate the insecticide, not for disease prevention.
• widespread wetlands contamination in Saskatchewan. Most pesticides above chronic toxicity levels are neonicotinoids and their replacement diamides used in seed treatment. 
• SK study relating increased pesticide residues in wetlands with reduced insect diversity and numbers.
•  it takes only 15 minutes for Red-winged Blackbird to feel really sick from eating neonicotinoid treated seeds and quit eating (equivalent to 4 canola seeds). so whether it survives or not, depends on how much it ate.There is a razor-thin margin between losing body mass and dying.

More  recent Annual Pesticide Sales Reports for 2009, 2010, 2011 more recent reports can be obtained by request to the PMRA.

Use of fertilizer and pesticides by Canadians (Statistics Canada)  Table with use every 2 years from 2013. In the box under geography, you can get stats per province.

Canadian pesticide use of forestry    Forest area treated with herbicides and insecticides (National Forestry Database)   Saskatchewan, Yukon,North-west Territories and Quebec are not currently using herbicides in forestry. 8 herbicides listed on the table, but glyphosate is the main herbicide used.   Bt is the main insecticide used on forests lately (table goes up to 2018) in New Brunswick, Quebec and British Columbia.   see also (bottom of page says 2020):  : WHICH HERBICIDES ARE USED IN FOREST VEGETATION MANAGEMENT?     Category: Vegetation Management

An insider's look into the City of Regina's pesticide arsenal  (Arthur White-Crummey, Regina Leader-Post, September 10, 2018)  The city has cut back on the amount of herbicide it sprays in parks and open spaces, while using more poison to respond to a booming gopher population. SNAP President Paule Hjertaas was interviewed for this article but had not finished reviewing the data. Here is the file as a pdf for when the link no longer works Insider Look in Regina's Pesticide Arsenal August 2018. The Regina Pesticide Use Report is apparently available on the city's web site. I am trying to locate it then I will add in the link.

Pest Control Products Sales 2016  (PMRA)

Pest Control Products Sales Report for 2011  (Government of Canada) French and English versions. However, the general trend has shown a small (3%) increase in the overall sales of pesticides in Canada (from 87 522 435 kg a.i. in 2008 to 90 324 969 kg a.i. in 2011). a.i. stands fo active ingredient. The number one pesticide used is glyphosate, as it was in the Saskatchewan sale's figures 2001-2003. 'Overall, 68.7% of pesticide sales in Canada were Agricultural sector products (see Figure 2), whereas 26.7% of pesticide sales were Non-Agricultural sector products and 4.6% were Domestic sector products. Corn gluten is one of the top ten domestic herbicide product and is included in 'sales of biopesticides' are '6.8% of pesticide sales overall'. Still no brekdown by province. With these numbers 3% is a huge quantity: an increase of 2,704,749.07 kg

The first Canadian Pesticide Sales Report for the year 2007-8 was released by the PMRA in June 2012. French report  

• The number of registrants reporting increased from 61% ( 2007) to 70% (2008).
• Not all products reported could be used in the calculations. Of the remaining 2105 products, the overall pesticide sales in Canada for 2008 were 87 522 435 kg a.i.(active ingredient). 
• The top ten active ingredients made up 61 836 154 kg a.i.or 71% of the total (Table 3).
• 4.4 % sales were of Domestic sector products
• no provincial data in the report.
• Further inquiry on provincial sales data indicates that provincial sales data are proprietory and therefore secret. This  is ludicrous in view that at least Quebec, Ontario and Alberta make their pesticide sales data public, and I had no toruble obtaining them from SK fro 2001-03.

Pesticide Sales in Saskatchewan 2001-03 with associated health effects. These are the only 3 years for which data are available. See the bottom of the table for legend. The health effects have been taken from the PANNA pesticide data base. Question marksfor health effects mostly indicate a lack of data in the area. These sales data are incomplete, with a maximum of 75% commercial vendors reporting. SK has no data whatsoever on domestic sales. Products brought in from the U.S. by anyone else other than a commercial vendor are also unaccounted for.

California Department of Pesticide Regulation Report Raises Concerns Over Increased Pesticide Use (Beyond Pesticides, May 21, 2015) The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) published its Annual Pesticide Use Report last week, which finds that overall pesticide use for agricultural purposes has increased by 3.7 percent between 2012 and 2013. In the meantime, where are decent pesticide use data for Canada and Saskatchewan? Saskatchewan collected data for a few years but did not have the manpower to enter them. Then the Pest Management Registration Agency (PMRA) said they would publish an annual report, the first published in 2012 for the year 2007-8, 5 years after actual use, compared to 1 1/2 year for California. The report was very low on information for individual active ingredients used and did not give a breakdown by province. On further inquiry, I was told that use by province is secret and cannot be disclosed. The Canadian public is stilll in the dark regarding pesticide used where they live. 

Pesticides don't just disappear from the environment or our bodies. They break down into other products, some being more toxic, some less, and many we know nothing about. (see What Happens When Pesticides Are Degraded? A Guide to Terms and Processes (JPR/Volume 9, No. 4, Winter 1989/1990, p. 25))  Some of the main breakdown products are included on this table with the known and unknown health effects.

The pesticide industry sales figures given the the Canadian Senate in 2000 indicate the use of over 17 million kg pesticides/year in SK and they keep reporting increasing sales. 

Sask Agriculture/crops  links to the Guide to Crop Protection updated annually with all the pesticides licenced for SK crops.