USDA Pesticide, Fertilizer Data Now in Online Database

The Agriculture Department under President Obama has partly restored public access to a trove of data on pesticide and fertilizer use that President Bush had blacked out.

Claiming budget constraints, Bush had cancelled publication of the Agricultural Chemical Usage reports by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in 2008.

In 2010, NASS partly reversed this move by publishing some of the data in its Quick Stats 2.0 online database. Full-text paper publication of the data remains discontinued.

• General descriptive info about what's in the Quick Stats 2.0 database and how to use it is here.
• You can access and search the Quick Stats 2.0 database by pointing your Web browser here.
• Previous Story: "USDA Stops Pesticide, Fertilizer Data," WatchDog of August 27, 2008.