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User: for specialty crops how much do growers spend on pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides per acre per crop rotation and …

for specialty crops how much do growers spend on pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides per acre per crop rotation and what has happened to that number in the past 10 years - gone up, gone down, or stayed about the same?

Assistant: Short answer:

Short answer:

• Level today: for most specialty crops, growers are typically spending a few hundred dollars per acre per crop on herbicides + insecticides + fungicides, with strawberries and some high-value fruit/nut crops well over $1,000/acre.
• Trend over the last 10 years: nominal dollars per acre have clearly gone up, often by 20–50%+, with a noticeable bump since ~2020. In real (inflation-adjusted) terms it’s closer to “flat to slightly higher,” crop-dependent.

Below are ballpark numbers by crop type, then the 10-year trend story.

1. Ballpark spend per acre per crop (specialty crops)

These are per acre, per crop rotation (or per bearing year for perennials) and are chemistry only (not including labor for application, scouting, etc.), using recent enterprise budgets and extension work.

Leafy greens (lettuce, spinach, etc.)

Example: Coastal California iceberg lettuce (2023 UC Davis cost study)

• Insecticide materials: ≈$420/acre
• Fungicide materials: ≈$430/acre
• Plus herbicide (smaller line, often ~$50–100/acre in these systems) Cost Study Files

Reasonable range for leafy veg:

~$400–900/acre per crop in pesticide (insecticide + fungicide + herbicide) materials, depending on pest pressure and planting window.

Cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower)

Example: Eastern broccoli enterprise budget (Cornell, 2020)

• Herbicides: $43/acre
• Insecticides: $300/acre
• Fungicides: $125/acre ➡️ Total pest-control chem spend ≈ $470/acre. Cornell Dyson

Reasonable range for cole veg:

~$300–600/acre per crop on herbicides + insecticides + fungicides.

Strawberries (very high input)

Strawberries are an outlier – especially California coastal berries:

• UC ANR notes pre-plant fumigation (fungicide/nematicide + chloropicrin) alone commonly runs $800–1,800/acre, depending on method and rate. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
• Historical USDA/ERS work (1990s) already had pesticide expenditures for strawberries at ~$1,588/acre nationally, which gives you a sense of how high they’ve been for a long time. Economic Research Service

In current UC Davis coastal strawberry budgets, total operating costs per acre are now on the order of $110k+/acre, and pest management (fumigation + in-season fungicides/insecticides + miticides) is one of the single largest cultural cost buckets. Farm Bureau

Reasonable range for strawberries:

~$1,000–3,000/acre per crop on pesticides/herbicides/fungicides (fumigation + in-season), with the upper end in long-season coastal CA systems.

Tree nuts (almonds as a proxy)

Recent almond work in California gives some concrete numbers:

• UC/Almond Board economics and cost studies put total operating costs around $3,700–3,800/acre, with custom pesticide application alone around $160–240/acre in recent budgets. The Almond Board of California
• Additional work on navel orangeworm (NOW) control estimates statewide average cost of pesticides + winter sanitation at ~$344/acre. West Coast Nut

When you add herbicides for the tree row, in-season insecticides, fungicides for diseases, and sometimes mating disruption, you’re typically in the low- to mid-hundreds per acre.

Reasonable range for almonds & similar tree nuts:

~$250–450/acre per bearing year on chemistries (herbicide + insecticide + fungicide + mating disruption), sometimes higher in high-pressure orchards.

Tree fruit (apples, stone fruit) – conventional & organic

• A well-cited survey of organic apples in the Northwest found average pest control costs of about $398/acre, with total costs ~$3,747/acre. ATTRA
• Conventional high-density apple budgets today generally land in a similar or slightly higher range for crop protection inputs, depending on disease pressure and codling moth programs. MU Extension

Reasonable range for apples / other tree fruit:

~$300–600/acre per year on pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, with wide variation by region and disease pressure.

2. What’s happened over the last 10 years?

You asked specifically: up, down, or flat?

Big picture: nominal $$ per acre has gone up

Several indicators point the same direction:

• For row crops, which have better time-series, analysts find that pesticide/chemical costs per acre have risen ~6–7% annually since 2000 – roughly tracking revenue per acre – with notable jumps around 2013 and again in the mid-2010s. farmdoc daily Specialty crops typically use more pesticide per acre than field crops, so they are exposed to these same price trends (or worse). Economic Research Service
• For citrus, USDA’s Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook showed that per-acre costs (including weed control and foliar sprays) for Florida orange groves increased about 7% per year from 2004/05 to 2014/15, dipped for a few years, and then started rising again after the 2021/22 season. Economic Research Service
• California pesticide use reporting shows biopesticide pounds and treated acres up 56% and 30% over the last decade, indicating more intensive or diversified pest programs, even as some older AIs are phased out. Department of Pesticide Regulation
• Globally, FAO data show continued increases in pesticide use volume in the Americas and Asia from 1990–2022, with only modest declines in Europe. FAOHome

In specialty-crop enterprise budgets, you see the same:

• UC Davis strawberry cost studies show total per-acre costs up ~18% just since 2021, with pest management a major part of that stack. Farm Bureau
• New iceberg lettuce/broccoli budgets show hundreds of dollars per acre just for fungicide + insecticide materials; older 2000s budgets list the same actives at lower prices and less complex programs. Cost Study Files
• Almond budgets and NOW-control economics show significant spend per acre on pesticides and sanitation that has generally crept upward as pest pressure and quality standards tightened. The Almond Board of California

Adjusting for inflation

If you deflate those nominal increases:

• Real (inflation-adjusted) pesticide spend per acre in many systems is more “flat to moderately higher,” not a straight line up.
• But even on a real basis, specialty crops that have added sprays (new invasive pests, resistance, disease cycles) look higher per acre than 10–15 years ago – strawberries, almonds, citrus, some veg.

Why it’s gone up

Drivers you’re probably already thinking about:

1. Product price & formulation shifts - Move from older, broad-spectrum chemistries to newer, often more expensive, reduced-risk AIs.
2. More complex pest & disease pressure - Invasive pests (e.g., NOW pressure in almonds, HLB in citrus, assorted disease complexes in berries/veg) → additional sprays or mating disruption. Economic Research Service
3. Regulation & loss of tools - Restrictions or cancellations on some high-leverage actives force adoption of multi-product programs that can cost more per acre even if total pounds of AI decline.
4. General input inflation since ~2020 - Post-COVID supply chain plus higher energy costs pushed all crop protection prices up along with freight and formulation costs. farmdoc daily

3. TL;DR, in your terms

If you want a simple working mental model for specialty crops, per crop rotation (or per bearing year for orchards):

• Vegetables (lettuce, broccoli, etc.): - ~$300–900/acre on pesticides/herbicides/fungicides.
• Tree fruit & nuts: - ~$250–600/acre on those chemistries, crop and region dependent.
• Strawberries & other very high-value systems: - ~$1,000–3,000/acre, with fumigation dominating.

And over the past decade:

The number has gone up in nominal terms for almost all major specialty crops.

In real terms it’s roughly flat to moderately higher, with the biggest real increases where new pests, disease pressure, or regulatory changes have forced more complex and expensive programs.

If you’d like, next step we can pick a specific crop/region (e.g., coastal CA lettuce, coastal CA strawberries, or almonds in SJV) and I can build a compact table that compares 2010-ish vs 2024-ish per-acre chem costs side-by-side from the UC cost studies.