Yield to the data: some perspective on crop productivity and pesticides

Summary

This analysis quantifies the land-use and food-security implications of pesticide-protected crop yields using historical yield data from North America. The authors developed a calculation interface demonstrating that pesticide-associated yield gains could spare between 146,000 and 11.6 million hectares depending on crop and country, and feed between 1.3 and 100 million additional adults. The work frames pesticide productivity benefits in terms of land preservation and food security rather than incremental yield percentages.

Regional applicability

This study is based on North American data and cropping systems; direct transferability to United Kingdom conditions is limited, as UK crop profiles, pest pressure, yield baselines, and farm sizes differ substantially. However, the methodological framework for quantifying land-sparing and caloric implications of yield-altering inputs could be adapted to UK crop data to inform domestic land-use and food-security debates.

Key measures

Hectares of land preserved by pesticide use; number of adults that could be fed by yield-protected production; caloric increases from pesticide protection; data sourced from seeding and yield records 2015–2019

Outcomes reported

The study quantified the land area that would need to be brought into production to replace pesticide-protected yields, and calculated corresponding caloric production and population fed under pest-loss scenarios. A user-friendly calculation tool was developed to model these trade-offs across crops and jurisdictions.

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