Pesticide Usage in Scotland: Rodenticides on Grassland & Fodder Farms 2017

Introduction

The Scottish Government ( SG) conducts post-approval surveillance of rodenticide use. This monitoring is conducted by the Pesticide Survey Unit at Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture ( SASA), a division of the Scottish Government's Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate ( ARE). 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 grassland and fodder crops was carried out in 2017. This is the 6 ^th survey in this series. The previous surveys were conducted in 1993, 1997, 2002, 2005 and 2013. The first four surveys (1993 to 2005) focussed on rodenticide use on farms growing fodder crops (ca 2,000 holdings in Scotland). The 2013 and 2017 surveys were extended to include data from a supplementary sample of grassland farms to allow estimation of rodenticide use on all Scottish farms growing grass and stock feeding crops (ca. 42,000 holdings). Due to this change in data collection methodology, and to the large gap in the time series between the 2005 and 2017 surveys, comparison data in this report are only presented for the 2013 and 2017 datasets. Future surveys in this series will revert to the standard format of comparing results with the two previous surveys.

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 as confidentiality 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.gsi.gov.uk 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 presents the results from this survey in comparison with results from the previous grassland and fodder farm rodenticide survey in 2013 (to allow comparison between years) and, to a lesser extent, the arable farm rodenticide survey in 2016 (to allow comparison between crop sectors).

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 grass and fodder farms and should not be interpreted as exact.