Reuters/Limoeiro do Norte, Brazil
The farmers of Brazil have become the world’s top exporters of sugar, orange juice, coffee, beef, poultry and soybeans. They’ve also earned a more dubious distinction: In 2012, Brazil passed the US as the largest buyer of pesticides.
This rapid growth has made Brazil an enticing market for pesticides banned or phased out in richer nations because of health or environmental risks.
At least four major pesticide makers - US-based FMC Corporation, Denmark’s Cheminova A/S, Helm AG of Germany and Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta AG - sell products here that are no longer allowed in their domestic markets, a Reuters review of registered pesticides found.
Among the compounds widely sold in Brazil: paraquat, which was branded as “highly poisonous” by US regulators. Both Syngenta and Helm are licensed to sell it here.
Brazilian regulators warn that the government hasn’t been able to ensure the safe use of agrotoxicos, as herbicides, insecticides and fungicides are known in Portuguese.
In 2013, a crop duster sprayed insecticide on a school in central Brazil. The incident, which put more than 30 schoolchildren and teachers in the hospital, is still being investigated.
“We can’t keep up,” says Ana Maria Vekic, chief of toxicology at Anvisa, the federal agency in charge of evaluating pesticide health risks.
FMC, Cheminova and Syngenta said the products they sell are safe if used properly. A ban in one country doesn’t necessarily mean a pesticide should be prohibited everywhere, they argue, because each market has different needs based on its crops, pests, illnesses and climate. Helm, based in Hamburg, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“You can’t compare Brazil to a temperate climate,” says Eduardo Daher, executive director of Andef, a Brazilian pesticide trade association. “We have more blights, more insects, more harvests.”
Public-health specialists here reject that argument. “So what if the needs of crops or soils in Brazil are different?” says Victor Pelaez, a food engineer and economist at the Federal University of Paraná, in southern Brazil. “What’s toxic in one place is toxic everywhere, including Brazil.”
Screenings by regulators show much of the food grown and sold in Brazil violates national regulations. Last year, Anvisa completed its latest analysis of pesticide residue in foods across Brazil.
Of 1,665 samples collected, ranging from rice to apples to peppers, 29% showed residues that either exceeded allowed levels or contained unapproved pesticides.
Since 2007, when Brazil’s health ministry began keeping current records, the number of reported cases of human intoxication by pesticides has more than doubled, from 2,178 that year to 4,537 in 2013. The annual number of deaths linked to pesticide poisoning climbed from 132 to 206. Public health specialists say the actual figures are higher because tracking is incomplete.
The pressures are clear here in Limoeiro do Norte, a town in the arid northeastern state of Ceara. The state used to be anything but a breadbasket. But since the 1990s, Brazil has built a system of irrigation canals in the area, and farming has flourished. So, too, has pesticide use.
In November, a federal court upheld a ruling that forces Fresh Del Monte Produce, the global fruit giant, to indemnify the widow of a worker whose liver failed after repeated handling of pesticides. In Limoeiro do Norte, a state court is weighing charges against a landowner accused by police of ordering the murder of an anti-pesticide activist.
“This is a giant laboratory for the worst of industrial-scale agriculture,” says Raquel Rigotto, a physician and sociologist at the Federal University of Ceara in Fortaleza, the state capital. Rigotto says her research team has found traces of many pesticides in water taps in the area, and a higher rate of cancer deaths there than in towns nearby with little farming.
The world has much riding on Brazil’s food boom. The population is expected to rise nearly 30% over the next three decades, leaving 2bn more mouths to feed. Brazil’s booming agricultural sector will be a critical source of nourishment. But with its equatorial sunlight, steady temperatures and year-round harvests, Brazil is also a fertile place for insects, fungi and weeds. To keep them at bay, farmers are applying more and more pesticides.
