Member of MPA – Small Farmers Movement – BRAZIL

The use of pesticides in a global scale was strengthened after World War II, when the remaining technologies from war were adapted to agriculture and chemical weapons were turned into pesticides.

In Brazil, this pack went strong in 1965, through the “National System of Rural Credit” that attached obtaining agricultural credit to the obligation of buying chemical inputs to the producers¹ In 1975, the military government built up the National Program of Agricultural Defensives that “provided financial resources to the creation of national companies and the installation, in the country, of subsidiary of transnational companies to produce chemical inputs”². The normative evolution did not follow the financial evolution destined to the use of pesticides in a way that the “vicious circle” of these products’ use was consolidated in a fragile and scattered normative system.

Along with necessity of building a new normative structure and the social pressures³, states’ laws were made, including the pioneer law of Rio Grande do Sul State, in 1982. This process contributed to the federal law of 1989, known nationally as “Pesticides Law”. Currently, there is an enormous amount of normative acts that regulate pesticides. The regulations of this products is extremely important, after all, pesticides are toxic substances and biocides, made to kill life⁴.

Since the year of 2008, Brazil is the greatest consumer of pesticides in the world, absorbing about 20% of all pesticides traded worldwide⁵.

The year of 2019 boosted some of the already existent problems linked with the pesticides’ issue. According to Stedile (STEDILE, 2020), some of the out standings of this period were:

General liberation of 502 new labels of pesticides, many of them forbidden in their country of origin; flexibilization of evaluation parameters, toxicity monitoring, attending only the interests of four transnational companies: Bayer/ Monsanto, Basf, Corteva/ DowDupont and Syngenta. Currently more than a half of the food that arrives in the supermarket are contaminated with agricultural poisons that proven affect the health of all population, producing, also, some types of cancer. (STEDILE, 2020)

The growth curve of pesticides’ approvals in Brazil had increased intensively along the last years, specially after the impeachment of President Dilma Roussef in the year of 2016. According to a research made by Repórter Brasil ⁶, in 2016 were registered 277 new pesticides; in 2017, 405; in 2018, nothing less than 450 new pesticides. In 2020, until November the 9th, there were 397 new pesticides, 365 of them were approved during the Covid-19 Pandemic. The table below helps understanding about this vertiginous growth:

⁷​

Even with all the problems related to the pesticides’ issue, such as chronic and acute intoxication, water contamination, bee’s mortality⁸, National Congress is processing a project of law (number 6.299/2002) that longs to to abolish the Pesticides Law. This project became known as “law project of poison”, once it will facilitate the entrance of even more toxic products on the country.

Between the changes this project of law wants to make, these are: a) replacement of the name “agrotóxico” to “pesticida” so that it looks more inoffensive; b) suppression of danger evaluation to register, facilitating the entrance of mutagenic, teratogenic and carcinogenic products; c) permission to mix up pesticides, what can result in not evaluated formulations by health and environment organs; d) end of the triple responsibility, becoming the ministry of agriculture the only responsible for pesticides registering, disregarding the judgment of health and environment organs; e) prescription of agronomic recipe paper with anticipation and no obligation of verifying the necessity of the use, making possible a raise on the consumption of pesticides; f) decreasing the attributions of states and cities on ruling about pesticides; g) Dispensation of studies and registering the pesticides destined to exportation; h) trade and use of products without finishing analysis about social and environmental impacts by creating “temporary” registration and authorization, among other unwise changes.

Facing this reality, there are clear negative possible consequences to brazilian society and national development. If this project gets to be approved by national parliament, even more toxic products will circulate on brazilian market, increasing intoxication cases, specially in the countryside, and also the possibility that the food that lands on brazilian people’s plates will have a more significant amount of pesticides residues, causing nefarious consequences to public health in a long term.

Beyond that, considering the restrictions to some products in the international market, it’s possible that Brazil will come to suffer restrictions on the international trades. It already occurs, there were cases in wich ships with products were no accepted due to presence of pesticide leavings.

Thus, unmistakable is the affirmation that the flexibilization of pesticides’ normative system will benefit only the oligopolies that act on pesticides market, remaining to brazilian people the weight of negative externalities, between them, the social and environmental damages that certainly will affect national development.

* Cléber Adriano R. Folgado Master Degree on Law by Federal University of Bahia. Coordinator of the regulation comission of National Forum to the combat of impacts of Pesticides and Transgenic. Member of MPA – Small Farmers Movement. MPA is a movementmember of Via Campesina.

Reference
BOMBARDI, Larissa Mies. Geografia do uso de agrotóxicos no Brasil e conexões com a União Europeia. São Paulo: FFLCH – USP, 2017.
FERRARI, Antenor. Agrotóxicos: a praga da dominação. Porto Alegre: Mercado Aberto, 1985.
FOLGADO, Cleber Adriano Rodrigues. Sistema normativo de agrotóxicos: elementos de contextualização histórica e reflexão crítica. In:
FOLGADO, Cleber Adriano Rodrigues. (Org.). Direito e Agrotóxico: Reflexões críticas sobre o sistema normativo. 1. Ed. Rio de Janeiro: Lumen Juris, 2017.
LONDRES, Flávia. Agrotóxicos no Brasil: um guia para a ação em defesa da vida. Rio de Janeiro: AS- -PTA, 2011.
STÉDILE, João Pedro. Balanço de 2019: os retrocessos do governo federal na política agrária, agrícola e ambiental. Caderno de estudos para a militância. Campanha Permanente Contra os Agrotóxicos e Pela Vida. Fevereiro de 2020.