Comparison Among Brazil, the United States and European Union Countries About Pesticides Use in their Agricultures

Abstract

Since the year of 1990, Brazil has significantly increased its consumption of pesticides, already overcoming in 2009 the total pesticide consumption of the European Union countries and since the year of 2008 the US agriculture consumption of pesticide per hectare of crop. In the second decade of the 21st Century, there is a graphic evidence that the consumption of pesticides per hectare of crop is stabilizing, albeit at different levels, in these three regions. When plotting in the same graph agricultural productivity and consumption of pesticides in Brazil, a high correlation between these two variables shows up. Given this context, the objective of the study was to analyze, in econometric terms, the behavior of pesticide consumption in these three regions and, specifically for Brazil, the relationship between pesticide consumption and the Brazilian agricultural productivity, taking into consideration the years ranging from 1990 thru 2016. Johansen’s Cointegration analyzes also supports that a long-term relationship takes place among pesticide use in Brazil, USA and EU countries as well as between productivity growth and pesticide use in Brazil. Additionally, a SVEC model was run to show up the relation between pesticide use and agricultural productivity in Brazil, unveiling a direct relationship between them.