Estimation of the greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural pesticide manufacture and use.

All references to energy for pesticide production in agriculture can be traced back to the original data of Green (1987). The most common method used to derive values for current chemicals is to use the average of each category of active ingredient. However a comparison of the mean and standard deviation of the categories provides little justification for using anything other than the overall average for agrochemicals, both for the total energy used and the breakdown into the different sources of inherent and process energy. However it is likely that using energy requirements derived directly from Green, such as the mean or maximum will generally underestimate for chemicals introduced since 1985.