SINDAG expresses repudiation of the reporting by Brazilian and English press agencies forcing and generalizing the link between the ag aviation and cases of contamination by pesticides

The Brazilian Union of Agricultural Aviation Companies (SINDAG) expresses its rejection of the report published and distributed last Tuesday (April 25th), by Agência Pública and by the English Lighthouse Reports, generalizing in a forced and irresponsible way the link between Brazilian agricultural aviation and cases of contamination in São Paulo state. Even more, suggesting that “pesticide rains” caused by the ag aviation are putting the safety of populations in Brazil and food products sold to Europe at risk.

Instead of informing and giving the necessary breadth to a debate as serious as food and environmental safety, the article only intends to reinforce a historical prejudice – in Brazil, widely used by political groups against agribusiness and, on the international scene, also used (due to lack of knowledge or not) to defend interests in terms of international trade.

To such an extent that the English partner of Agência Pública illustrated its report with an image of an agricultural plane launching water – taken in a demonstration of fighting forest fires in Mato Grosso. A type of operation where the aircraft throws the entire load (of water) on the flames at once, to protect natural reserves and guarantee the safety of firefighters on the ground. Misrepresenting a reality of applications in crops, which are made by the bars under the wings and in flights where aircraft apply about twenty liters of product per hectare – 2 ml per square meter.

Ironically, the photo used by Lighthouse Reports was taken in a Brazilian state where the agricultural aviation every year has an effective participation in the protection of the Amazonian biome against the flames. Misrepresentation like the episode that occurred in November 2021, when Agência Pública manipulated the opening photo of a report on deforestation, making it look like an agricultural plane was throwing pesticides over the Amazon rainforest. As well as the episode in which the Agency, in October of last year, forge the cause/consequence relationship with the objective of linking agricultural aviation to the incidence of cancer in cities in São Paulo state.

REINFORCING THE MYTH: the photo used by the Lighthouse Reports agency to show the “poison rain” is, in fact, the image of a firefighting demonstration that took place in the State of Mato Grosso, where the plane throws the entire load of water at once over the flames. Unlike the application of pesticides, where the product is applied by a system of booms under the wings, where the spraying is done at a rate that reaches 20 liters per hectare (equivalent to 2 ml per square meter)

To reinforce his anti-aviation speech, the Brazilian hand of this report also ignored the fact that the risks in the application of pesticides (chemical or biological) are the same for all sprayers, whether terrestrial or aerial – from backpack sprayers (used to apply pesticides with the operator walking inside the field), to tractors, planes or drones. Including the risk of drift, which is when the product deviates from the target and which occurs whenever the appropriate climatic parameters are not observed (wind speed, air humidity and ambient temperature).

Furthermore, in the case of planes, it should be remembered that during transfer flights (from its airfield to the runway in the field), they fly empty. And, during applications, the bar system has negative pressure whenever closed between one range and another – that is, together with the sealing of the nozzles, there is still a suction force that reinforces the security against loss of drops). Especially because, with the pesticide load on the plane often having the same price as a luxury car in Brazil, if there had been waste on the part of the planes, the market itself would have extinguished agricultural aviation.

Add to this the fact that, in Brazil, agricultural aviation is the ONLY tool for handling crops with specific and broad regulation. Which, for example, requires special training for its pilots – where having a commercial pilot’s license and adding at least 370 hours of flight time is just the prerequisite for entering the ag-pilot school. This is in addition to the obligation for each operation to be coordinated by an agronomist and to have an agricultural technician specialized in aerial operations in the field ground team.

Ag aviation is also the ONLY tool for pesticide application in which there is a requirement in Brazil for a decontamination system to clean equipment and the aircraft – a special washing place, where all residual water goes to a treatment system of effluents, protecting the environment and people. Exclusivity that occurs even with the products used by aviation being the same ones also applied by land sprayers.

Even with this difference in treatment by law (in relation to ground equipment), instead of combating these obligations, they are celebrated by the ag-aviation sector as credentials of its safety. Furthermore, they are complemented by programs from SINDAG, and the Brazilian Institute of Agricultural Aviation (IBRAVAG) aimed at continuous improvement – such as the MBA in Ag Aviation Management, Innovation and Sustainability and the Good Ag Aviation Practices program (BPA Brazil).

As for cases of contamination of the environment or people, it is precisely the rules on the ag aviation industry that make it possible to clearly establish when an irregular application was or was not conducted by an aircraft. That is, when an ag aviation operator does something wrong, he has no way of hiding his fault from the authorities.

However, ironically because it is a tool that is always visible when in the field, aviation is precisely the first to be accused whenever there is suspicion of contamination by pesticides. Whether due to lack of knowledge or convenience of the accuser.

An example of this is the case in Buriti, Maranhão state – mentioned in the report by two news agencies. Where the police investigation of more than 1,000 pages found that the only application of pesticides close to the communities had been conducted by land equipment. In addition, infectologists and other health agents reported that the cases of skin lesions were caused by an outbreak of scabies at the site.

In the case of reports on agricultural air operations, in addition to the summary sent monthly to the Ministry of Agriculture (which is reformulating the system for receiving via the internet to be able to process this data), the complete documentation of each operation remains with the company, for two years, obligatorily available of any inspection – another transparency factor that only aviation has.

This became clear at a meeting promoted by the State Public Ministry in September 2002, in Piracicaba/SP. Although the initial focus was on agricultural aviation, the state prosecutors found that the problem is not the application tool, but how the product is applied (emphasizing that risk factors are inherent to all types of equipment). And SINDAG itself has been encouraging inspections to combat the myths against the sector.

The report by Repórter Brasil and its European partner also causes outrage for stating that ag aviation defends the activity through a “toxic lobby”. Introducing as a nexus the fact that aerial spraying is prohibited throughout Europe, and, in Brazil, this only occurred in “few municipalities and only one state, Ceará” (precisely cases in which myths prevailed over rationality).

Incidentally, the narrative trying to associate cases of contamination precisely with the only tool with specific legislation, which generates records of all its operations and where all actors are technicians, is a huge nonsense. Even more so when referring to a technology that is always visible to everyone when it is working in the field and that always remains within the reach of the authorities.

Even more so considering, for example, data from the 2006 Agro Census, by The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE: showing that, in that year, applications were carried out with backpack sprayers in 973,444 rural properties, while in 379,477 the spraying of pesticides was carried out with tractors and in 10,043 properties the applications were carried out by airplanes (see HERE, in Table 2.2.11 – page 539).

And even though the 2006 Agro Census was the last one to detail this information at this level, the absurdity of the “surprise” expressed in the article about agricultural aviation (a highly technical sector) not being prohibited in Brazil is also latent in the result of the Agro Census 2017. That year, according to the survey, 15.6% of the farmers who used pesticides in Brazil did not know how to read and write and, of these, 89% stated that they had not received any type of technical guidance. Of the literate farmers who use pesticides in the country, 69.6% had completed elementary school at the most and, among them, only 30.6% declared having received technical guidance on the application of the product.

Finally, the direct comparison between the realities of Europe and Brazil ends up being nonsense. Especially due to the characteristics of the European climate – which exponentially reduces the pressure of pests on crops. In contrast to tropical agriculture in Brazil, where three harvests are achieved per year. In addition, most rural properties in the Old Continent are more conducive to the use of terrestrial pesticide application technologies.

Although there is already a trend towards the increasing presence of spraying drones, which are beginning to be authorized, for example, in Spain. And not to mention that the cases in which spraying by aircraft is authorized in Europe include the fight against mosquitoes. Not only for disease prevention, but also to prevent mosquitoes from scaring visitors away from tourist cities. Finally, it is worth remembering that the European continent, which has one of the strictest controls in the world on pesticide residues in food, is the second main international destination for Brazilian agricultural products.