Larissa Bombardi: Pesticides bring colonialism to cells – 10/21/2023 – Illustrious
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Agriculture stopped being a synonym for food production a few decades ago, since global corporations began to dominate the sector, says USP professor Larissa Bombardi.
For the researcher, the mass use of pesticides is one of the symptoms of this process and creates a new type of violence, now through molecules that reach the cells of humans and other animals and cause damage to health and the environment that is not yet fully known.
In “Pesticides and Chemical Colonialism” (Elefante), Bombardi discusses the double standard of European countries, which allow the export of pesticides banned in their territories to producers of agricultural commodities, such as Brazil, which, for her, shapes a geography of abyss, allowing chemical companies in Europe to earn billions by selling their products to peripheral countries.
In this episode, the geographer states that women are among those most affected by the use of pesticides and, at the same time, are protagonists in movements to denounce this production model and in agroecology experiments.
Bombardi also spoke about the release of pesticides during the Bolsonaro (PL) government, which, for her, “opened the gates of hell”, and the intimidation that made her leave Brazil. The author currently lives in Europe and is linked to the Development Research Institute, based in Paris.
The use of pesticides does not occur in the air. Brazil is one of the world’s largest consumers of pesticides because it has one of the largest land concentrations on the planet. For this reason alone, it was decided that an area equivalent to Germany would be transformed into soybeans in Brazil. This is what explains why Brazil is one of the world’s largest consumers of pesticides, precisely because the consumption of pesticides is associated with the agrarian issue in Brazil, Argentina or wherever we are talking about. The expression colonialism goes very well here, because in classic colonialism, obviously, the central countries or the metropolises had the connivance of local elites and oligarchies, and it is the same today
She points out tensions on the topic in the Lula (PT) administration, but says she is hopeful about the debates recently promoted by the Ministry of Agrarian Development. As reported by Sheet in August, the federal government registered 231 pesticides from January to mid-July this year, maintaining the pace of release during the Bolsonaro years.
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Flavia Rios, co-organizer of a dictionary of ethnic-racial relations, Bruno Paes Manso, author of a work on the values spread by criminal factions and Pentecostal churches, Gabriela Leal, anthropologist who researches hip-hop culture and graffiti, Antônio Bispo, have already participated in the Ilustríssima Conversa dos Santos, quilombola thinker who proposes the concept of counter-colonization, Luiz Marques, who discussed why this decade is decisive in dealing with the climate catastrophe, Bela Gil, who defended remuneration for the work carried out by housewives, Javier Montes, Spanish writer who focused on the life of the dancer and naturist Luz del Fuego, Paulo Arantes, professor of philosophy at USP who believes that Lula will be successful if he stops the extreme right, Eliane Brum and Maria Rita Kehl, guests on the episode commemorating the podcast’s five years, João Moreira Salles, author of a book about the predatory model of occupation of the Amazon, among other guests.
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