The dictatorship of agrochemicals: the National Program of Agricultural Defensives and changes in pesticides production and consumption in Brazil, 1975-1985

Abstract

This paper relates the National Agricultural Defensives Program (1975-1980) with the developmentalist policies of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship and the debates on agrochemicals regulation. The program stimulated internal production of pesticides, an important element in the project of agricultural “modernization” and “imports substitution.” Questionings on the use of agrochemicals were minimized by the notion of “safe use,” despite insufficient monitoring of health and environmental consequences. Besides the production in Brazil of compounds banned elsewhere, the program signaled a profile change of agrochemicals used, which puts into perspective the prohibition of organochlorine insecticides in the 1980s.