Pesticides in Brazil: 500,000 tons of poison – economy

Seen from above, Brazil is one thing above all: very green. There is the Amazon rainforest in the north. On satellite images it looks like a sea of ​​trees. At the same time, there is also that mosaic that stretches across the south and east of the country: thousands of green-beige patches, each of them a pasture, a field or a field.

Brazil is now one of the largest agricultural producers in the world. There are more cattle in the country than people, and in total the Brazilian soybean fields are larger than the entire Federal Republic of Germany.

The industry is booming and while on the one hand more and more Amazon rainforest is literally going up in smoke to make way for more pastures and fields, on the other hand the use of pesticides continues to increase.

More than half a million tons are now sprayed and splattered in Brazil every year, a toxic rain, hundreds of liters, every day. In addition, more than 500 agricultural poisons were newly approved in the country last year alone – more than ever before.

Bolsonaro has appointed an agricultural lobbyist as Minister of Agriculture

One man makes it possible: Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil’s right-wing president won the 2018 elections with the help of powerful cattle breeders and large landowners. Since then he has promoted an agricultural lobbyist to Minister of Agriculture and cut funding from environmental agencies. In addition, the number of permitted pesticides has almost doubled during his tenure and now a draft law could soon be passed that will drive up the approvals again: Officially it bears the name PL 6299/02, unofficially the press and Environmentalists but only from the “pacote do veneno“, the poison package.

The draft law would give the Ministry of Agriculture the authority to approve a new pesticide. Environmental and health authorities would only have an advisory role. The testing processes would be accelerated and thus probably watered down, and even substances that are proven to be harmful to health could be approved if they are important enough for agriculture.

The project passed the Chamber of Deputies at the beginning of February and is now up for a vote in the Senate. Environmentalists are sounding the alarm, not only in Brazil but worldwide: “The draft law could aggravate the already dramatic situation with pesticides in Brazil even further,” says Gesche Jürgens from Greenpeace Germany.

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In fact, the consequences of the high use of pesticides in Brazil are worrying. There are thousands of cases of acute poisoning every year, and these are just the official figures: Many people are afraid to report incidents because large farmers are often the only employers in the region.

Girls who grow breasts as early as six months

In addition to all this, there are long-term consequences: Biologists are registering malformations in tapirs, and there are mass deaths among bee colonies. In villages close to large monocultures, researchers have recently noted an increase in infant mortality. In another case, they found girls who had grown breasts by the age of six months.

It is not only the sheer amount of pesticides that plays a role in all of this, but also the question of which agricultural toxins may be used. Because some of the agents that are sprayed every day over Brazilian fields are not approved at all in Germany and Europe.

Environmentalists speak of a “double standard”: while Germany and the EU protect nature and people at home, European companies can do good business selling pesticides to Brazil.

German companies also make money here: Bayer, for example, says that Brazil is an important market because of its extensive agriculture. In total, the company lists more than 90 products that it offers in Brazil, but according to Greenpeace, almost two dozen of them are classified as highly dangerous, and 17 are not approved in the EU.

Bayer says that this shouldn’t be misunderstood: “The mere fact that a crop protection product is not approved in the EU says nothing about its safety,” explains a company spokesman. For many products, the approval was not applied for at all because they are not needed in the EU due to different weather conditions or other pests. There would also be functioning control authorities in Brazil. “Their ratings reflect the specific agronomic conditions of the respective countries and in no way represent a double standard accused by some NGOs,” says Bayer. There are clear rules that are strictly followed and even exceeded.

Fruits from Brazil contaminated with pesticides also end up in German supermarkets

BASF argues in a similar way. Here, too, one earns well with the sale of agricultural poisons in Brazil. They take their social responsibility very seriously: “We have therefore proactively stopped selling products in WHO classes 1A and 1B (high acute toxicity)”.

Open detailed view

Marina Lacorte of Greenpeace Brazil rolls her eyes when she hears these arguments. “These are always the same justifications,” she says. Just because a drug has been classified as less dangerous by the WHO does not mean that it is safe. “It always depends on how pesticides can be applied on site, whether they can be sprayed by plane, for example, and what the local limit values ​​are,” says Lacorte. And of course there would be different climate zones in the world. “But there are also countries in Europe where it doesn’t really get cold in winter and where citrus fruits grow. Why are agricultural poisons banned here that we can use in Brazil?”

Lacorte hopes that the Brazilian legislative proposal for easier approval of pesticides will fail in the Senate. At the same time, some European countries have already started to act: In France, pesticides that are not approved in the EU can no longer be produced and exported. There are similar rules in Switzerland today.

Studies by Greenpeace show, however, that papayas, mangoes and many other fruits that come from Brazil to German supermarkets are contaminated with pesticides – including those that are considered highly dangerous and are not approved in the EU.