Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes)

Plant protection products

PL 66 (Opastinsilta 12 B), 00521 Helsinki, FINLAND

See sub-concepts below.

The data set comprises the annual sales of active substances contained in plant protection products placed on the national market for one calendar year according to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 as amended by Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/269 of 16 February 2017 as regards the list of active substances.

National law on plant protection products (In Finnish: Laki kasvinsuojeluaineista, 1563/2011).

https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2011/20111563

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland

2012

National law on plant protection products (1563/2011) specifies the organisations responsible for compiling the sales (Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency) and use (Natural Resource Institute Finland) data, which are required under Regulation (EC) N:o 1185/2009.

No divergence.

The plant protection product data is collected in liters or kilograms and converted to the form 'kg of active substance'.

The classification of the active substances in plant protection products is annexed (Annex III) to Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/269 of 16 February 2017 amending Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning statistics on pesticides.

The active substances are classified according to chemical and functional similarity. Aggregation levels in descending order comprise: major groups, categories of products, chemical classes and active substances.

The statistics cover the wholesale and retail trade sector operating in placing plant protection products on the market.

All authorisation holders of plant protection products report the quantity of their products that are placed on the market nationally. This may include imports and exports, which are not specified in the statistics.

This data collection comprises pesticide sales data based on the term 'placing on the market' as defined in Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 October 2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market. The scope of the Regulation covers plant protection products and their active substances as can be seen from the key terms of the act immediately below:

Plant protection products: products consisting of or containing active substances, safeners or synergists, and intended for one of the following uses:

• protecting plants or plant products against all harmful organisms or preventing the action of such organisms, unless the main purpose of these products is considered to be for reasons of hygiene rather than for the protection of plants or plant products;
• influencing the life processes of plants, such as substances influencing their growth, other than as a nutrient;
• preserving plant products, in so far as such substances or products are not subject to special Community provisions on preservatives;
• destroying undesired plants or parts of plants, except algae unless the products are applied on soil or water to protect plants;
• checking or preventing undesired growth of plants, except algae.

Active substances: substances or micro-organisms, including viruses, having general or specific action against harmful organisms or on plants, parts of plants or plant products.

Quantity: implies kilograms of the active substances sold.

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishes a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on the placing on the market and agricultural use of those pesticides which are plant protection products as defined in Article 2 (a)(i). The statistics shall apply to the annual amounts of pesticides active substances placed on the market in accordance with Annex I and the quantity of active substances shall be aggregated according to the list in Annex III (as amended).

Enterprise placing plant protection products on the market; authorisation holder or holder of parallel trade permits.

All enterprises placing plant protection products on the market; authorisation holders and holders of parallel trade permits.

See sub-concepts below.

The entire territory of the country.

Åland Islands

2011 - 2019

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because it is not based on an index number of time series.

See sub-concepts below.

Not applicable

Census is sent out to all companies, or their representatives, that have had an active authorisation of a plant protection product at some point during the reference year. Data on authorisations and related authorisation holders are retreived from the national plant protection product registry (since 2021 at www.kemidigi.fi).

Reported product volumes (in L or kg) are transformed to 'kg of active substances', in accorance with the composition data that has been recorded as a part of each product authorisation.

Annually.

A list of products with an active authorisation during 2019 was retreived from the national plant protection product registry and placed on the website of Tukes (www.tukes.fi/asiointi/lomakkeet/kasvinsuojeluaineet). Authorisation holders of these products, or their representatives, were contacted via email and requested to fill in the list with volumes placed on the market during 2019. Deadline for a response was set to 30/04/2020 and reminder(s) were sent out in cases of no response. Final entry was received in October.

All responses were compiled in to a single list, where any deviance from the original list (missing products, added products, changed product names, multiple entries per product) was flagged for investigation. Comparison to the previous year product volumes was made, but only if the result was already identified as unclear.

The reported product volumes (L or kg) were converted to active substances with the composition data (% w/w or % w/v) available in the national plant protection product registry. Data was grouped by active substance, linked to the respective Eurostat code (e.g. F01_01) and further grouped on the different levels indicated by this code.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on time series.

Not available

Not available

Main users of the data are national agricultural and environmental research institutes (Luke, Syke), while queries are also annually received from individual researchers, FAO and Statistics Finland. Only highly aggregated data is readily available in the Tukes websites.

The data is used in several different indicators, where the fine-level input is not recognisable from the results. In some cases the data has been intended for publication, thus requiring the aggregation of all confidential information.

No user satisfaction surveys have been carried out and no self-reported feedback has been received.

The data collection covers all active substances of plant protection products placed on the national market and the information of all authorisation holders.

100%

See sub-concepts below.

Sales data were received from the entire population, no estimation was made.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on samples, but covers the whole statistical population of authorisation holders and plant protection products placed on the national market.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on samples, but covers the whole statistical population of authorisation holders and plant protection products placed on the national market.

See sub-concepts below.

A response was eventually received from all authorisation holders, or their representatives. Unregistered change of a product authorisation holder and having a third-party representatives complicates the follow-up process and may lead to overlapping entries or false zeros. Around 40 % of the authorised products are not actively placed on the market.

From eight products, more than one entry was received. Out of these, two were deemed to be dublicates.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics as the data stem from one source.

The list of authorised products is a non-locked Excel-sheet. The original product list was not used (or was modified) by some companies. Six products were reported with the wrong name, not including the unique product identifier (register number). Two emergency permit products were added to the list, as the used list source contained only regular authorisations.

A response was eventually received from all authorisation holders, or their representatives. The query contained 64 companies and 58 responses were received, some containing information from several companies. Reminder(s) was sent out to 14 companies and the final entries were made in late September.

By the given deadline (30/04/2020) ~25 % of responses were missing, but these were received by the end of October 2020.

0 %

When using the original template was used correctly, the probability of a processing error in the agency end is small. Around 17 % of the datafiles were provided in a transformed format (pdf, jpeg) that required manual input. Product composition data is sourced directly from the plant protection product registry.

For ~ 3 % products, the authorisation holder did not specify "0 kg" in their response. These were deemed to be zeros after consulting the company, viewing the authorisation record or looking at the historical sales data.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on estimations.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the reported data on plant protection products covers the whole year.

No revision policy has been established.

No revision practices have been established.

Not applicable

According to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, the data is published by Eurostat 15 months after the end of the reference year and the national quality report 20 months after the end of the reference year.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics as the data and national quality reports are only published once in a final result.

15 months after the end of the reference period for the data;

20 months after the end of the reference period for the national quality report.

According to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, data must be transmitted until 30 December of the year t+1, and national quality reports until 31 March of the year t+2.

On time

Not applicable

Data are collected on a country level (NUTS 0). They are not comparable on a regional level. The geographical comparability between countries is evaluated by Eurostat.

Not applicable, because there are no mirror flows in pesticide sales statistics.

Data from 2011 to 2015 have not yet been reclassified in accordance with the changes made in the active substance list. Therefore, this timerange is not comparable with the data produced from 2016 onwards.

4

Sales data on plant protection products with hazard classification is also collected annually at the other end of the distribution chain, and between every 5 years on the user level. However, no cross domain comparisons have been made so far.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is annual.

Not applicable, because it is not related to national accounts.

No major changes have been made in the data collection process.

Press release: "Decreasing trend in the agricultural plant protection products, forestry use increased by urea", https://tukes.fi/-/kasvinsuojeluaineiden-maatalouskaytto-laskussa-urean-myynti-nostaa-metsatalouskayttoa#c2bcad9d

Press article: "Tukes: Agricultural use of plant protection products is modest, while the use in forestry has increased in the recent years", https://www.maaseuduntulevaisuus.fi/maatalous/artikkeli-1.1222493

No publications.

No online database

Not applicable

Access to the data on active substance level can be provided upon a request. However, if the data is declared confidential, access can only be granted for research purposes and with certain restrictions.

An unambiguous data request can be submitted via email directly to the Registrar's Office at kirjaamo@tukes.fi.

If it is not completely clear what data there is to be requested, it might be better to submit a question via the Q&A portal in the Tukes website: https://tukes.fi/en/online-services/ask-questions-or-provide-feedback

Aggregated data is provided on the website of Tukes. Data is also sent annually to several organisations, which publish them separately. Most fine-level data is published by Eurostat. Grouping criteria used by the organisations may differ.

No national guidelines available.

Annual quality reports are available internally from 2011 onwards. The latest quality report is dissmenated by Eurostat.

Not requested.

Not requested.

Contacting the authorisation holders, follow-up, compiling the responses, confidentiality flagging and reporting occupies partially 4 employees, for a total of ~ 19 working days. No information is available on the respondent burden. A new web-portal was integrated into then national plant protection product registry, which is expected to increase reporting efficiency on both sides, after the initial transition phase in 2021.

In cases, where the active substance data could be associated with a single actor, and used to deduce the product sale volumes of this actor, the data is considered to be confidential. Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 and national Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999) are followed.

National Act on the Openness of Goverment Activities (available only in Finnish and Swedish): https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/1999/19990621

Regulation (EC) N:o 223/2009: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FI/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32009R0223

Active substance data is declared confidential in the following cases:

• it originates from products of only one or two (independent) actors
• it is necessary for dissemination of the parent group

Group level data is declared confidential in the following cases:

• it contains 1 - 2 confidential subunits
• it is necessary for dissemination of the parent group

The sale statistics are dominated (~70 %) by a single active substance, urea (Fungicides and bactericides), which is used solely in forestry. This should be accounted for when calculating sales statistics per utilised agricultural area (kg/ha).