Lula’s government approved more pesticides by July than in his other terms

The Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture approved 231 new pesticides by July. That’s more than in any full year of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s previous two terms, as well as the years of former presidents Dilma Rousseff and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, according to newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.

The 2023 figure is comparable with 2019, the first year of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro administration. During his term, pesticide approvals set new records: 475 in 2019, 493 in 2020, 562 in 2021, and 652 last year.

A vocal defender of pesticides, Mr. Bolsonaro issued a decree in 2021 to facilitate and accelerate the approval of new pesticides in the country.

The period for the analysis of new substances, which could reach more than six years, became 12 months. The decree also provides for the release of products that have a “safe margin of exposure” — a term that has been questioned by experts as being too vague.

Of the products approved this year, five were classified as “highly toxic” to human health. Two were classified as “very hazardous,” and 47 “very hazardous” in terms of environmental impact.

At the beginning of the year, Lula revoked several decrees that were ideologically aligned with the Bolsonaro administration, such as the one that expanded permits for citizens to carry weapons. But contrary to expectations, Mr. Bolsonaro’s pesticide decree was not on the list.

Paulo Teixeira, agrarian development minister, argued this week for the previous government’s pesticide policies to be revised.

“We need to have a debate about pesticides in Brazil, about what is more harmful, what is less harmful, what can be replaced and what is not yet. This ‘status quo’ does not satisfy Brazilian society. In the previous period, there was an excessive release of pesticides which we need to review,” said Mr. Teixeira, a close ally of Lula.

Currently, the debate over pesticides is based on a bill (nicknamed the “Poison Bill”) passed by the House in February and awaiting analysis by the Senate. Many of the bill’s provisions were already included in the 2021 decree.

As an agricultural powerhouse, Brazil is one of the world’s largest consumers of pesticides. It became the largest importer of these chemicals in 2012, and is second only to the U.S. in terms of absolute amounts of pesticides used (over 377,000 tons in 2020, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization).

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