Pesticide Atlas 2022-the report edited by a coalition of nonprofits, including PAN Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe-offers an update on the global business of agrotoxics (pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fungicides and other poisons). (1)
The market continues to grow, in the EU as in the rest of the world, thanks in part to agrochemical lobbies that effectively counter policies designed to protect public health, biodiversity, soils and the environment through restrictions on the use of toxic chemicals. (1)
Pesticide Atlas 2022. Foreword
The use of agrotoxics continues to be(falsely) invoked as essential to ensure yields in agriculture. Their sales-which have been growing steadily since the 1940s-have indeed accompanied the so-called green revolution, the limitations of which, moreover, became apparent as early as the later 1960s.
In fact, chemistry in agriculture has led to the gradual abandonment of traditional agricultural practices-such as crop rotation and the combination of synergistic species-and incentivized monocultures. Thus causing soil depletion and acute toxicity in agricultural systems.
Big 4, the burgeoning global business
The Big 4 – the four agrochemical giants (Bayer Monsanto, BASF, Corteva, Syngenta) that control 70 percent of the market planetwide – market about 4 million tons of agrotoxics annually including herbicides (50 percent), pesticides (30 percent) and fungicides (17 percent)
Pesticide Atlas 2022 well describes their business strategies, which include the sale of ‘tanned seeds’ (with pesticides) and GMOs, old and new(NBTs, or GEs, or TEAs) in turn essential to increasing farmers’ dependence on chemicals and strengthening monopolies.
Agrochemicals move a business whose total value is currently estimated at $84.5 billion (2019). And it is expected to grow tremendously, to 130.7 billion by 2023, thanks to demand from countries in the Global South where governance is weaker, as seen in Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro.
European Union, a quarter of global sales
The European Union is a major pesticide market, accounting for nearly a quarter of global sales of agrotoxics. Moreover, the deficiency and opacity of statistical data, which has been repeatedly reported, prevents the precise identification of the territories where they are dispersed.
According to Eurostat, France, Italy, Spain and Germany are the largest markets in the EU. Conversely, the most significant decrease in pesticide use was observed in Denmark, where pesticides have been subject to ad hoc taxation since 1972.
Denmark, farmers get pesticide tax revenue
In Denmark, ‘since July 2013, the tax is not linked to the nominal value [of agrotoxics, ed.], but to the toxicity of the substance on human health, the environment and groundwater .
All revenue generated by the tax is refunded to the agricultural sector, and this mechanism has eased resistance among farmers’ organizations. (1)
Farmers are thus encouraged to give up hazardous toxins and use inputs allowed in organic farming. An excellent example to follow at the European level as well, in the ‘pesticide regulation’ now under discussion.
NIMBY, EUexport of banned substances.
The European Union is the leading exporting region for agrotoxics. The most venomous pesticides and herbicides-banned in the EU because they are carcinogenic and genotoxic, neurotoxic and/or toxic to reproduction, as well as lethal to bees (e.g., paraquat, dichloropropene, atrazine, neonicotinoids) are exported to South America, Asia and Africa, where regulations to protect public health, workers and the environment are often lax.
Even fatal accidents and ecocides are the order of the day, as reported back in 2017 by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
‘A study published in 2020 found that 6.2 percent of smallholder farmers in Ghana mix agricultural chemicals with their bare hands and 25 percent burn empty containers.’
‘According to conservative calculations, poisoning incidents number about 255 million in Asia, just over 100 million in Africa and about 1.6 million in Europe,’ the report says.
A brake on the double standard
The disreputable practice of double standards endures. A few days ago, the revision of the REACH regulation was postponed by one year, to the end of 2023, as we have seen. Mysteriously missing in the rescheduling of activities is the plan to ban the export to non-EU countries of chemicals banned in Europe, called for by 60 MEPs in 2021. (2)
However, some European states are taking action, reports Pesticide Atlas 2022:
– in France, a law came into effect in January 2022 banning the production, storage and export of pesticides banned by the EU. These substances can no longer be used to maintain green spaces, trails or forests,
– Switzerland has banned the export of five particularly toxic pesticides from 2021, with more active ingredients to follow,
– in Germany, an announcement was confirmed in September 2022 to legally end such exports in the future.
Some importing countries have also taken measures against the double standard on pesticides. Tunisia, Mexico and the Palestinian National Authority have imposed a ban on imports of Pesticides banned in the exporting or producing country.
Boomerang effect
Moreover, the NIMBY (not in my back yard) logic of shipping poisons far from home is negated by importing into Europe goods grown in the very South. Where sometimes-as has already been denounced by PAN Europe-the very banned substances remain.
‘Residues of 74 pesticides banned in the EU were found in foods tested on the European market in 2018. 22 had been exported from Europe the same year.‘.
Toxic environment
The Pesticide Atlas 2022 report also delves into the impact of agrotoxics on the environment, biodiversity, and thus on our health.
Environmental pollution by pesticides now affects two-thirds of the planet, as revealed in the recent study by the University of Sydney (Australia). Air, water, soils, food. With the aggravation of microplastics, which pesticides leach into soils along with toxic molecules.
Policy listens to citizens
The path to self-destruction is only useful to enrich pesticide producers. But it is not unchangeable. The European Commission pledged in its May 2020 Farm to Fork strategy to reduce the use of synthetic pesticides by 50 percent by 2030.
Civil society revives and continues to call for action to phase down and eliminate this poisonous chemical. He intervenes in the debate on the proposed regulation to replace Directive 2009/128/EC, on the ‘sustainable’ use of pesticides, with concrete proposals, as we have seen.
The demands of the population are clear. In October 2022, the European Commission confirmed the validation of more than one million signatures collected in the European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Save Bees and Farmers. And it is now therefore required to take concrete steps to direct farmers toward agroecology, to reduce the use of synthetic pesticides by 80 percent by 2030.
Marta Strinati and Dario Dongo
Notes
(1) Pesticide Atlas 2022. 18.10.22 https://www.arc202 0.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PesticideAtlas2022_Web_20221010-1.pdf
(2) Margaux Racaniere. L’UE pourra continuer d’exporter des pesticides toxiques à l’étranger. Euronews. 20.10.22 https://fr.euronews.com/2022/10/20/lue-pourra-continuer-dexporter-des-pesticides-toxiques-a-letranger
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
