Pesticides are toxic and have multiple and complex impacts on the environment and our lives: these are analysed in some detail in the Pesticide Atlas 2022, a joint publication by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Friends of the Earth Europe, Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz, and PAN Europe.
The word pesticides covers all those chemicals used in agriculture to deal with unwanted plants (herbicides, the most used group of active substances, according to the research) as well as fungi (fungicides) and insects (insecticides).
It would appear from such definition that such chemicals have specific and limited effects. However, the report points out, the impacts of pesticides are felt on a far wider group of organisms than those that are their targets (both unwanted and beneficial to agriculture) and well beyond farmers’ fields (i.e. the sea).
For example, “glyphosate – the most widely used herbicide in the world […] can harm soil bacteria and mycorrhizal symbiosis with the roots of grapes” (p.20-21) and “fungicides can increase the toxicity of pyrethroid insecticides for bees” (p.24). Not only do chemicals impact non-target organisms on site, they spread far wider than the fields where they are applied. “They can seep into the soil and groundwater, become airborne, or blown away – some can be found over 1,000 kilometers away” (p.8). They can accumulate and persist even for a long time (p. 9).
With that in mind, it is important to point out that the effects of pesticides on the whole ecosystems are unfortunately not taken into account when pesticides are approved, even where strict authorisation criteria are required, as is the case in the EU.
Human health is also affected by pesticides. Not only does pesticide poisoning occur with some frequency among farmers (about 385 million cases per year), pesticide drift can affect rural communities and adjacent residential areas in ways that are “still largely unknown” (p.31) as the long term effects of inhaling pesticides, and the impact of so-called pesticide cocktails – that is the combination of different chemicals as opposed to one single active ingredient at a time – are not well researched. Residues of pesticides are also present in food, and imported food can even contain residues of pesticides that are banned for their toxicity in the country where the produce is sold to consumers (p.23).
Pesticides are also a matter of human rights, social justice, equality. Pesticides are big business and the EU is one of the world’s biggest markets. Even if authorisation criteria are stricter than elsewhere, it has been difficult to enact policies to reduce their use (p. 14, 52). The few corporations that produce pesticides, often in bundle with genetically modified crops, are constantly expanding their business, for example through the digitalisation of agriculture (p.50). Increasingly, they are widening their reach to the Global South where regulation is less strict. It is there that the worst of poisoning happens, and women are often at the forefront of exposure (p. 18, 34, 36, 44).
It is not a rosy picture, but the report concludes on a positive note, by highlighting that change is possible with agroecology and providing examples from pesticide-free regions.
