Axel Kicillof’s government published a resolution to “geo-reference” the areas where agrochemicals are not allowed to be used. Each municipality will have to adhere voluntarily. Socio-environmental organisations point out that the National Constitution is clear and that spraying must be stopped. “Health is worth more than any productive activity,” they say.
Agencia Tierra Viva
The government of the province of Buenos Aires issued a resolution that establishes the georeferencing of restrictions on agrochemical applications. Although the implementing body for this regulation is the Undersecretariat for Agrarian Development and Agrifood Quality, it is established that it will be the municipalities that must voluntarily adhere to it in order to be part of the map that will then be drawn up with the information obtained. The socio-environmental assemblies are distrustful and demand concrete measures.
According to official information, of the 135 districts of Buenos Aires, 73 have some kind of ordinance that spatially restricts the use of pesticides. The province’s initiative therefore aims to graphically represent the territorial restrictions on applications, as determined by each ordinance. Among the explanations given by the provincial government for this proposal is that it emerges from the meetings that the Technical Observatory on Agrochemicals had with local governments. The Observatory carried out this consultative experience with the aim of creating a reform of Law 10.699, which is 24 years old and does not establish limits on spraying, but no progress has yet been reported in this regard.
Upon learning of the new measure, the Exaltación Salud collective stated: “The province has an enormous debt with the public health of the people of Buenos Aires and an unacceptable delay in the face of the seriousness of the socio-environmental emergency”. They also state that this decision shows that “politically they have no intention of banning applications, that they continue to support the fallacy that with ‘good practices’ or controls these agrotoxins can be controlled”.
The text of Resolution 297, published in the Official Gazette on 9 August, states that geo-referencing will make it possible “for agrochemical applications established both in municipal ordinances within the framework of their competencies and at the provincial level by Law No. 10,699 and its Regulatory Decree No. 499/91, to have an agile and easily accessible visualisation tool that serves as input for the development of public policies on the matter.”
“Getting down to work”
For Jorge Picorelli, from the Asamblea Paren de Fumigarnos de Mar del Plata, these “are actions that they do to ‘disguise’ themselves as green but afterwards they are a tool to hide other things or to say that they are on the right track”. The activist says that, in the rural area where he lives, there are no controls. In 2013, the Municipal Council of General Pueyrredón banned spraying within 100 metres of schools, health care centres and health centres, and 25 metres from waterways, clubs, campsites, sports villages and tourist resorts. So, what is the distance that will be taken into account in the province’s geo-referencing?
“If they want to do something they don’t have to remove it, the Constitution already says what they have to do, which is: let’s get on with it,” says Picorelli.
At the same time, he comments that the new resolution generates mistrust and refers to the facts: “For example, we have the Ministry of the Environment of the Nation where Juan Cabandié absolutely supports extractivism. He was responsible for validating the environmental impact study of the oil companies, the study was poorly done and that was the basis for the judiciary to issue the injunction and stop offshore exploration in the Argentinean Sea. Today it has complaints about the burnings in Rosario and Entre Ríos and does nothing.
His colleague, Marcela Lupini, adds: “In General Pueyrredón they joined the National Network of Agroecological Municipalities (Renama) but it was just a show because, when we denounce that they are fumigating, they arrive to check a week afterwards. That’s why we don’t believe in adhering to void resolutions.
Health is not negotiable
The socio-environmental activists of Exaltación de la Cruz make it clear that the measure shows that “they don’t even have the tools to know where it is applied in the territory, something that this map would seek to rectify” and they ask “when will they start to ban agro-toxins, pesticides and dangerous fertilisers, when will they start to keep them away from the people”. In August 2021, the City Council rejected an ordinance that increased the buffer zone to 1,000 metres, currently set at 150 metres. The fact generated the repudiation of the population and a precautionary measure that supports the claim of the population to increase the distances.
After learning of the geo-referencing initiative, Exaltación Salud said that the map to be drawn up “will show what we know, that in most municipalities it can be applied almost everywhere”. And they question the fact that no mention is made of existing judicial measures, as in the case of General Pueyrredón or Exaltación de la Cruz.
The Exaltación Salud Assembly claims that the government should begin by totally banning the 140 pesticides in use in the country, which are banned in other parts of the world because of their danger to people and the environment. “We demand that the greatest effort be put into banning dangerous pesticides and fertilisers and supporting agriculture without pesticides,” they say in a statement. They add that “health is worth more than any productive activity: it is not negotiable and has no price”.
No effective policies
The regulation was presented as the result of meetings held in 2021 between the Agrochemical Technical Observatory of Buenos Aires and the municipalities. There, the text indicates, it became evident “the need to have a tool that makes possible a graphic representation that reflects the territorial regulations imposed in the local ambit and the restrictions on the application of agrochemicals, contemplating the regulations of those municipalities that regulate on the subject”.
In these meetings, various organisations expressed the need to eradicate the use of agrochemicals in order to preserve human health and the environment. However, the geo-referencing seems to go in the opposite direction. The resolution states “that in this framework, the need to establish new actions to be conducted by the Technical Observatory of Agrochemicals was visualised in order to implement future tools to help achieve the objectives set out in terms of the use and application of agrochemicals”.
