Agrotoxics Toxic Relationships – El Salto
Researcher Birgit Müller talks about the love story between farmers and glyphosate. Müller argues that the love of pesticides manifests itself, for example, in the love of homogeneous and “clean” fields, which is the sine qua non of productive agriculture. There is no doubt that there is love, but the relationship between farmers and pesticides can also be explained as a true story of destruction, a toxic relationship.
It is more or less proven that pesticides harm human health and the environment (the lack of scientific consensus is rooted in the nature of these chemicals and the practices of the companies that produce them, as Vincen Adams argues in the book). Glyphosate and Vortex) And in any case it seems logical that it might not be a good idea to dump millions of tons of chemicals designed to kill on the farms where we produce food. Pesticides harm farmers in other ways. These are the basis of modern industrialized, productivist and exploitative agriculture that is destroying agriculture as we know it, a model of agriculture that makes it impossible for farmers to survive under decent conditions.
These days the focus is on the fact that pesticides used in other countries with more lax environmental regulations are suffocating producers (possibly and indeed, field workers in those countries as well). Despite big claims about pesticides, efficiency and productivity, we know that productive agriculture and markets overproduce many foods resulting in low prices, in a context where farmers have little or no control over the prices of the food they produce. There is no control.
Pesticides, whose global production centers are in India, China or Indonesia, have tied us to a producer model and large multinational agribusinesses that trade with every bit of it.
Not much has been said about the fact that, for many years, pesticides have killed pollinators, damaged the soil, contaminated the water we drink, created resistance in insects and endangered plants. and “accidentally” killed crops. Pesticides, whose global production centers are in India, China or Indonesia, have tied us to a producer model and large multinational agribusinesses that trade with every part of it. Contrary to the popular imagination of productive agriculture, these compounds have made farming even more difficult.
It is said that biocides simplify agriculture, but they do so by closing the debate on how we will produce food in a sustainable way (socio-economically-environmentally) in the future. pesticides (and lobby the agrochemicals that control them) close off the possibilities of imagining agriculture governed quite differently from what we know.
The agrochemical reduction objective set by the Green Deal in 2020 opened a window to a different agriculture, although it is true that it was never well implemented (it can be questioned whether it was actually implemented at all). was implemented in). To account for such deficiencies, not only the active ingredients must be restricted. We should also work closely with technicians who advise farmers, there should be large-scale introduction of new machinery (without bureaucratic procedures), practical training to use and support it, and exchange of experiences and knowledge. -There should be initiative to provide. Reduction plans should be made from a local perspective that takes into account the socio-economic and ecological realities of each region and crop type.
The European Commission’s U-turn on curbing pesticide reduction targets announced on Tuesday suggests there will be no separate farming in the EU for the time being.
There should be an informed debate about which technologies will replace pesticides, not some easy slogans about the benefits of digitalization that fell from the sky (from the sky of technology companies). Yes, digitalization/automation can help, but its limitations, which are recognized by users and even manufacturers, should not be underestimated when analyzing the real possibilities of technology in improving specific tasks. goes (beyond collecting data and advising farmers). This digitization—including digital field notebooks—benefits larger farmers and service companies, not small farmers. The protests are not going to stop.
And furthermore, reducing pesticide use cannot be considered in isolation within agricultural policy. This should be accompanied by an improvement in farm income (a minimal increase in the price of food is considered unacceptable, but this will not happen if housing prices fall drastically) which makes improvements to farms economically and emotionally viable.
The European Commission’s U-turn announced on Tuesday on curbing pesticide reduction targets suggests there will no longer be isolated farming in the EU. The regulators of life and death, pesticides, are again used to artificially prolong the promise of the “modernization” paradigm of agriculture, which has so far not concerned itself with the death of small and medium-sized farmers.