Where non-ag pesticides are used

Uncultivated Ag 1%
Regulatory Pest Control 2%
Commodity Fumigation 1%
Vertebrate Control 2%

Other 3%
Public Health 3%

Tomato Processing

Rights of Way

Structural Pest Control Ditches

and
Landscape Maintenance
Banks
Ditches and Banks 6%
Public Health
Tomato Processing 40%
Other

Vertebrate Control

Regulatory Pest Control

Uncultivated Ag
Landscape
Commodity Fumigation Maintenance
13%

The county Ag
Commissioner’s Office
doesn’t track exactly
where pesticides are
applied, but it does
record the “commodi- Structural
ties” they’re used Pest Control
on—the things being 14%
Rights of Way
rid of pests. Here’s the 18%
percentage breakdown
for 2006-2007 non-ag
pesticide applications,
rounded to the nearest
thousand pounds of SOURCE: Monterey
product weight. County Agricultural
Commissioner’s Office
Monthly Summary
Pesticide Use Reports
What is a pesticide? for 2006 and 2007

I
n common language, a pesticide is a substance used to control organisms considered nuisances—insects, weeds, fungi, algae, or
microbes—because they harm crops, invade habitats, damage buildings or threaten public health.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency takes the definition further, describing a pesticide as “any substance or mixture of sub-
stances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest…[or] for use as a plant regulator, defoliant, or desiccant.”
California food and agriculture code creates an even bigger umbrella, including “any spray adjuvant,” and “any substance or mixture
of substances…for defoliating plants, regulating plant growth, or for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest…which may
infest or be detrimental to vegetation, man, animals, or households, or be present in any agricultural or non-agricultural environment
whatsoever.”
As far as the Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office is concerned, pesticides include mineral oil used to smother
mosquito larvae, synthetic pheromones that confuse male moths, genetically modified insecticidal bacteria, slightly toxic weed-killers,
highly toxic gopher poisons, and everything in between.