Pesticide Usage in Scotland: Rodenticides on Arable Farms 2020

Introduction

The Scottish Government (SG) conducts post-approval surveillance of rodenticide use. This monitoring is conducted by the Pesticide Survey Unit at SASA, a division of the Scottish Government's Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate. The current rodenticide surveillance programme consists of surveys of rodenticide use on arable farms (biennial), grass and fodder farms (every four years) and use by Scottish local authorities (every four years). As part of this programme, a survey of rodenticide use on farms growing arable crops was carried out in 2020. This is the 15^th survey in this series carried out biennially since 1992.

The Scottish Pesticide Usage reports have been designated as Official Statistics since August 2012 and as National Statistics since October 2014. The Chief Statistician (Roger Halliday) acts as the statistics Head of Profession for the Scottish Government and has overall responsibility for the quality, format, content and timing of all Scottish Government national statistics publications, including the pesticide usage reports. As well as working closely with Scottish Government statisticians, SASA receive survey specific statistical support from Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS).

All reports are produced according to a published timetable. For further information about Pesticide Survey Unit publications, and their compliance with the code of practice, please refer to the pesticide usage survey section of the SASA website. The website also contains other useful documentation such asprivacy and revision policies, user feedback and detailed background information on survey methodology and data uses.

Additional information regarding rodenticide use can be supplied by the Pesticide Survey unit. Please email psu@sasa.gov.scot or visit the survey unit webpage:

http://www.sasa.gov.uk/pesticides/pesticide-usage

Structure of report and how to use these statistics

This report is intended to provide data in a useful format to a wide variety of data users. The results and comparison section present the results from this survey in comparison with results from the previous surveys in 2016⁽¹⁾ and 2018⁽²⁾.

Appendix 1 contains data, including estimates of rodenticide use, responses to questions about compliance with best practice and rodenticide stewardship and operational information about sample farms. Appendix 2 summarises survey statistics including census and holding information, raising factors, survey response rates and outlines the estimated financial burden to survey respondents. Appendix 3 defines the terms used throughout the report. Appendix 4 describes the methods used during sampling, data collection and analysis as well as measures undertaken to avoid bias and reduce uncertainty. Changes in method or data collection from the previous survey years are also outlined in Appendix 4.

It is important to note that the figures presented in this report are produced by surveying a sample of holdings rather than a census of all the holdings in Scotland. Therefore, the figures are estimates of total rodenticide use on Scottish arable farms and should not be interpreted as exact.