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The world’s biggest pesticide manufacturers earn more than a third of their income from selling products that pose serious hazards to human health, the environment and bees, new research shows. Most of these sales are made in low- and middle-income countries and often with substances which have long been banned in Europe. This was revealed by a joint investigation conducted by Public Eye, a non-governmental organisation based in Switzerland, and “Unearthed”, the investigative unit of Greenpeace UK. It is based on a huge dataset from the leading agribusiness analyst company Phillips McDougall and focuses on pesticide sales of the world’s biggest agrochemical giants BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Corteva Agriscience, FMC and Syngenta. They control 65% of the global pesticide market, estimated at 57.6 billion US dollars in 2018. The data covers $23.3bn in pesticide sales of the top-selling products in the most important markets. Since the data only amounts to 40% of the global pesticide market, the NGOs describe their estimates as “highly conservative”. The organisations analysed the data using the highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) list compiled by Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International, which is based on assessments performed by regulators. [+] more ...