Crop dusting danger
Rio de Janeiro – The use of crop dusting in Brazil – the world’s biggest consumer of pesticides – has helped fuel the giant agricultural industry that props up Latin America’s largest economy. But as public health concerns mount, the future of the practice is in doubt.
As fields of produce and local communities expand until they nearly collide, residents are exposed to the harsh chemicals sprayed down onto the plants from the air.
“When the planes fly around our houses, we feel the effects on our health: eye irritation, skin allergies, cough,” said Diogenes Rabello, the leader of a Sao Paulo chapter of the Rural Workers Without Land Movement, an agricultural reform organisation.
Critics of the method – officially known as aerial fumigation – won a victory in May, when the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled in favour of a 2019 ban in the northeastern state of Ceara. Other states are considering following suit.
But the decision sent shock waves through the giant agribusiness sector in Brazil, which used nearly 720 000 metric tons of pesticides in 2021, or 20 percent of the global total, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation.
To maintain high yields, agribusiness – the driver of the Brazilian economy – depends on the intensive use of pesticides, especially those administered from above. The huge use of pesticides is one of the main arguments European detractors point to in negotiations over a free trade agreement between the EU and the South American Mercosur trade bloc.
In Brazil aerial spraying still accounts for between 25-30% of pesticide use, according to the National Union of Agricultural Aviation Companies. In the state of Sao Paulo – the second-largest user of pesticides in the country – prosecutor Gabriel Lino de Paula Pires said it was impossible to spread pesticides (from the air) safely.
Crop dusting is much faster than spraying pesticides from the ground.
Some 30% of aerial pesticides used on sugar cane plantations around Sao Paulo in 2019 contained potentially carcinogenic active ingredients, according to the Federal University of Santa Catarina.