Pesticide harm

“Why do we still douse the world's food in pesticides when safer methods often grow more?”

3.7mn

tonnes of pesticide sprayed on the world's crops in 2022, double the amount used in 1990

FAO, 2022

70%

less pesticide used across dozens of integrated-pest-management projects in Asia and Africa, with yields up around 40%

Pretty & Bharucha, Insects, 2015

Root causes (expand to see solutions)

Pesticide use is treated as the price of feeding a crowded planet, yet much of it turns out to be avoidable: safer methods can hold pests back with far less spraying, and sometimes grow more.

What's at stake

Long-term exposure is linked to Parkinson's disease, hormone disruption and lasting brain damage in children exposed in the womb; farmworkers who handle these chemicals with little protection carry the heaviest exposure.

In the field, the same chemicals kill the bees and natural predators of the pests, so heavy spraying can make the next outbreak worse. Run-off also contaminates groundwater and waterways, harming aquatic life.

The global picture

South Asia

High severity

India's farming belt has some of the world's heaviest pesticide use and contaminated groundwater; Sri Lanka's 2021 ban on all agrochemicals, imposed without transition support, cut rice yields 32% in a season and was reversed within seven months.IWMI

Highly hazardous pesticides restricted in wealthy countries are still widely sold across Latin America, Africa and Asia.