Pesticides are substances that are used to control and protect crops against pests.
This includes herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and other substances used to control other types of pests.
Pesticides, in various forms, have been used for millennia in agriculture. It was common for ancient agricultural societies to use naturally occurring elements such as sulfur, arsenic, or mercury to poison crop pests.
Today, pesticides are often produced synthetically and designed to target specific organisms.
They can be important for the protection of crops, farmers’ produce, and increases in crop yields.
But pesticides can also have negative impacts on local biodiversity, and when they’re used without appropriate safety protocols, can be toxic to the farmers or workers applying them.
On this page, you can find all our data and visualizations relating to pesticides.
