Increasing Minimum Daily Temperatures Are Associated with Enhanced Pesticide Use in Cultivated Soybean along a Latitudinal Gradient in the Mid-Western United States

Assessments of climate change and food security often do not consider changes to crop production as a function of altered pest pressures. Evaluation of potential changes may be difficult, in part, because management practices are routinely utilized in situ to minimize pest injury. If so, then such practices, should, in theory, also change with climate, although this has never been quantified. Chemical (pesticide) applications remain the primary means of managing pests in industrialized countries. While a wide range of climate variables can influence chemical use, minimum daily temperature (lowest 24 h recorded temperature in a given year) can be associated with the distribution and thermal survival of many agricultural pests in temperate regions. The current study quantifies average pesticide applications since 1999 for commercial soybean grown over a 2100 km North-South latitudinal transect for seven states that varied in minimum daily temperature (1999-2013) from -28.6°C (Minnesota) to -5.1°C (Louisiana). Although soybean yields (per hectare) did not vary by state, total pesticide applications (kg of active ingredient, ai, per hectare) increased from 4.3 to 6.5 over this temperature range. Significant correlations were observed between minimum daily temperatures and kg of ai for all pesticide classes. This suggested that minimum daily temperature could serve as a proxy for pesticide application. Longer term temperature data (1977-2013) indicated greater relative increases in minimum daily temperatures for northern relative to southern states. Using these longer-term trends to determine short-term projections of pesticide use (to 2023) showed a greater comparative increase in herbicide use for soybean in northern; but a greater increase in insecticide and fungicide use for southern states in a warmer climate. Overall, these data suggest that increases in pesticide application rates may be a means to maintain soybean production in response to rising minimum daily temperatures and potential increases in pest pressures.