Food safety issues, especially those related to pesticides and antibiotics residues, have aroused widespread concern in recent years. Therefore, the detection of pesticides, antibiotics and other harmful residues in agricultural products is an indispensable step for guaranteeing the national food safety, consumer's health and promoting economic and trade development. As an emerging detection method, Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has the advantages of simple operation, short operation time and high sensitivity. A brief introduction on SERS, the SERS enhancement theory and SERS active substrate is given first of all. The paper focuses on the current research status of SERS in the field of pesticides residue detection in agricultural products (such as animal meat, aquatic products, fruits and vegetables and other agricultural products, etc.). Traditional colloids substrate has the characteristics of low cost, easy synthesis and excellent Performance of SERS. In order to improve the enhancement effect, many researchers optimize the size and morphology of the substrate to form flower-shaped nanostructure, star nanostructure, rod nanostructure and chain nanostructure and other forms of colloids particles. In order to improve the performance and stability of colloidal substrates, a series of core-shell nanostructures have been developed based on the synergy of composite materials. The solid substrate structure is stable and has good consistency and repeatability. There are three kinds of flexible substrates, SERS substrate based on flexible devices, SERS substrate based on flexible polymer and SERS substrate based on flexible carbon material, which has the advantages of excellent mechanical properties, not easy to damage and low cost, which is conducive to the realization of minimally invasive or non-destructive detection. The review summarized and compared these different studies of SERS methods, which could be used to detect pesticides, antibiotics and other harmful residues in agricultural products based on different substrates, different agricultural products, different pesticides. The sensitivity of the current study is relatively high, which shows the application potential of SERS technology combined with nano substrates in detecting pesticide residues in a complex matrix. At the same time, there are still great challenges for the application of SERS technology in the pesticides residue analysis.(1)Low pesticides residues and uneven distribution of pesticides in agricultural products lead to relatively weak Raman signals, which are susceptible to fluorescence and background noise.(2)The complex matrix of agricultural products has a great influence on the SERS spectral data.(3)The current SERS detection method has not been standardized, and the results of different detection schemes are quite different. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering, whether it is the detection technology or the support theory is progressing, are given for a broader application prospect in food safety.