Yield to the data: some perspective on crop productivity and pesticides

The scientific consensus is that pesticide use maximizes crop yields in the face of pest and disease pressures. Often, the debate then becomes a "so what" question (e.g., a percent or two increase in yield is inconsequential, so why use pesticides at all?). We set out to help give technical and lay audiences an objective and quantitative sense of what it means for pesticides to protect crop yields from two perspectives: (i) the number of …