Pesticide Use Reporting (PUR)

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What's New in PUR

PUR Workgroup Meeting on August 2nd 2023: PUR data is used by regulators, researchers, educators, and commodity groups to identify successful alternative pest management systems, promote reduced-risk pest management practices and chemistries, preserve and safeguard endangered species, establish use limits for some pesticides on air and water quality, and protect human health. DPR has invited a diverse array of researchers and regulators who use PUR data in their studies and analyses to showcase how the data informs and supports their work.

An agenda, PDF for the event is available.

California’s pesticide use report program is recognized as the most comprehensive in the world. Since 1990, California has required full, detailed reporting for nearly all types of agricultural pesticide use and many nonagricultural pesticide uses as well. The data is used by a wide range of stakeholders including academic and government scientists, growers, registrants, non-profits, policy makers, legal firms, journalists, and the general public. It serves to assist DPR in achieving its mission statement to protect human health and the environment by regulating pesticide sales and use, and by fostering reduced-risk pest management.

The Pesticide Use Report data can be accessed in three different ways

1. California Pesticide Information Portal (CalPIP)

Current years of CalPIP data are refreshed at least once a year. CalPIP therefore includes updates submitted after the publication of the Pesticide Use Annual Reports

2. Pesticide Use Report Summaries by Year

DPR staff prepare Pesticide Use Annual Reports, as well as tables of data totals indexed by chemical or commodity (site), Top Five and Top 100 lists, and County Summary Reports.

Reports are available from 1989 to present.

Previous years' reports are available, in PDF, to the public upon request. If you would like to request any of those reports, please email PUR.inquiry@cdpr.ca.gov with your request.

3. Pesticide Use Report Data

Download Pesticide Use Annual Report data, by year, from DPR's File site. Note that this data does not include any updates that may have occurred after the release of the Annual Report. Zip files of data from 1970 through most recent available. Pesticide Use Annual Reports data from 1970-1973 are PDFs of the original microfiche and have not been error-checked or made into tables.

  • Downloadable GIS spatial data required to plot pesticide use by township and section
  • Download zip files of full years of Pesticide Use Annual Report data
    • Guide, PDF to using PUR files, 2002 and later
    • The 2011 and 2012 PUR data in CalPIP and on DPR's File Site were updated on 10/24/2014. These updates include a number of additions and corrections to the data since they were first posted. These updates resulted in a 0.4 percent increase in the total number of records and a 0.05 percent decrease in the total pounds of AI in 2011, and a 0.7 percent increase in the number of records and a 0.4 percent increase in pounds of AI in 2012. The most important corrections were in the data fields site_loc_id, license_no, and grower_id. When the 2011 and 2012 data for these 3 fields were originally transmitted to DPR they were incorrectly left padded with zeros. These data have been changed.

Laws and Regulations

Related Links

  • PUR Web GIS Query Tool - UC Davis Agricultural Geographic Information System (AGIS) Laboratory
  • Agricultural Pesticide Use Web Mapping Service – California Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Investigations Branch
  • Forms for pesticide use reporting
  • Pesticide Use Reporting: An Overview of California's Unique Full Reporting System (May 2000)
  • Report on pesticide use report data quality (2001)
    • Part I, PDF
    • Appendix A, PDF – Preliminary and Expanded List of PUR Problems and Issues
    • Appendix B, PDF – Pesticide User Report Improvement Plan
    • Appendix C, PDF – An Assessment of Spatial Data Quality
    • Appendix D, PDF – Pesticide Use Report Loading and Error-Handling
  • Report on new procedures for identifying outliers in pesticide use rates, PDF (September 2016)

Please send your questions and comments to PUR.inquiry@cdpr.ca.gov