- Quilombola communities in the Sapê do Norte region of Brazil’s Espírito Santo state have been reporting toxic crop dusting by pulp and paper company Suzano on its eucalyptus plantations.
- Inhabitants speak of damage to their gardens, dried-up water sources, dead fish and diseases.
- The use of aerial pesticide application has been prohibited in the EU since 2009; in Brazil, the number of people affected by the practice increased by 86% between 2021 and 2022.
CONCEIÇÃO DA BARRA, Espírito Santo — Beatriz Cassiano was working in her vegetable garden when she suddenly heard her grandson yelling, “Grandma, get out of there, get out, come in the house! The plane!”
In an interview with Mongabay, Cassiano recalls being caught off guard by an airplane dropping pesticides as it flew over the homes in her community. “We didn’t know, [nobody] let us know it would happen. They were dumping the poison out, but they were turning in the air over our people’s properties,” she says.
At a certain point, Cassiano was hit by the pesticides. “I was powdered with it, and my arm started to itch.” Her garden didn’t withstand the impact of the pesticides. “I lost our pumpkin plants, our corn …”
The community of Linharinho lies in the municipality of Conceição da Barra, a part of Espírito Santo state known as Sapê do Norte. It is a quilombo, a traditional Brazilian community originally formed by runaway enslaved people. There are 32 quilombos in Sapê do Norte officially recognized by the government’s Palmares Cultural Foundation.
According to reports from the community, global pulp and paper giant Suzano has in recent years been using aerial application of pesticides on its eucalyptus plantations that surround the community. Statements say there is no prior communication and that the safe distance limit of 250 meters (820 feet) from isolated homes regulated by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Normative Instruction 2/2008 is not being respected.
Community members tell Mongabay that the plane sometimes flies so close to their homes that the pesticides land on their bodies, in their gardens and their rivers. The situation is causing concern about the safety of consuming food they grow on their own land and the water they drink from natural sources because they could be contaminated.
The problem began at the end of 2017, when the company Fibria Celulose called a meeting in Linharinho to say they would begin aerial pesticide spraying in the region. The community responded with requests that the company be transparent about the products applied and the way they would be applied and present a technical report proving that the applications were safe.
It was agreed on Oct. 11, 2017, that aerial pesticide application on the eucalyptus fields surrounding the community would happen only after all this information was provided. Only six days later, Fibria disregarded the agreement when it carried out the procedure without having met the community’s demands, disrespecting the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, which guarantees prior communication to traditional communities before any action that may impact their territories and ways of living is carried out.
In 2018, the Suzano S/A group bought Fibria, but according to Leovegildo dos Santos Evangelista, who lives in Linharinho, the problems persisted after the buyout. Evangelista tells Mongabay that the community has suffered losses because of the crop dusting. “We had a field of pumpkins and a banana orchard; it all turned yellow and died.”
He describes how, when their plants were hit by the dust, the pesticide “turned the leaves yellow. Then four days later, it looked like it had all been burned. It killed everything — all my banana trees that had fruit hanging on them.”
Evangelista recalls how his daughter was hit with the pesticide: “When the plane came by as it was turning, the poison landed on my daughter. She came down with a headache, and some of it got in her eye. She’s still undergoing treatment today. She had surgery that today costs 30,000 reais [$5,775]. Her retina was detached.”
He says that he himself had “stomach problems because of that bad water we were drinking,” following the incident.
Maria Helena de Jesus Gomes also says that her health has been “terrible” since the crop dusting began. She has developed uterine cancer, glaucoma and heart problems. She adds that the stress and insecurity generated by the conflict led to deterioration of the community’s mental health.
The symptoms described to Mongabay by many different community members are the same as symptoms of acute intoxication from pesticides commonly found in many active ingredients, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s index. In addition, the continual consumption of contaminated water and food can lead to the development of chronic health problems.
In the case of Leovegildo Evangelista’s daughter, a study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences shows a link between toxins used in pesticides and retina problems. According to the article, damage to eye tissue can happen because of direct contact with the substance or due to the consumption of contaminated food. Two of the toxins specified to cause these damages are commonly used in Brazil: the insecticide chlorpyrifos and the herbicide glyphosate.
With regard to the damage done to food crops in the quilombo, the scientific literature shows that the inadequate use and incorrect application can cause yellowing, wilting and even death in plants.
The community’s claims strongly suggest that there is a serious violation of human rights underway, which requires rigorous investigation supported by conclusive laboratory testing.
In the EU, aerial application of pesticides has been prohibited since 2009 because of potential harm to human health and the environment. One problem associated with the practice is drift — when the pulverized liquid wafts away from the intended target.
There are many factors influencing the trajectory of the powder during application, including the weather, composition of the substance, distance from the target and the speed of the plane dropping the poison. All must be carefully considered before any application to reduce risk of accidents and adverse effects.
Conflicts involving the application of pesticides to eucalyptus crops are not unique to Linharinho. Also in Conceição da Barra, Suzano was sentenced to pay fines to the inhabitants of the Morro da Onça quilombo for materials damage after one of its service providers destroyed a yucca plantation and coconut palm seedlings when it dusted the area with pesticides on July 9, 2022.
After a civil inquiry, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office filed a civil action in 2019 against Suzano because of the incidents in Morro da Onça, demanding adaption of its procedures according to current legislation and security parameters, in addition to the creation of a communication protocol for providing the communities with information as well as compensation for collective material damages.
Suzano’s response
In its response to Mongabay, Suzano informs that, since it began using aerial application in 2017, it “has consistently worked to implement the best processes possible, proactively informing communities of its activity and adhering strictly to applicable policies and standards.”
The company highlights that “a procedure for communicating the aerial application of pesticides to traditional communities has been developed.”
With regard to the 2017 incident in Linharinho, Suzano says it “acted promptly (within the timeframes of the dialogue process), was open to understanding their perspectives, and responded appropriately. Since then, Suzano has not registered any external complaints on this subject in the Company’s communication channels or during other ongoing dialogues with the communities.”
Suzano mentions that “all pesticide applications undergo prior inspection by specialized teams” and that it “rigorously selects, evaluates and monitors all service providers, especially those responsible for pesticide application, ensuring compliance with the Company’s supplier standards.”
Read Suzano’s full response to Mongabay here.
‘That’s how this empire was built’
Land conflicts between traditional communities and the pulp and paper industry in northern Espírito Santo go back to the 1970s, a period when Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship and when the nation turned the tables on being an importer of bleached pulp to being one of the world’s biggest exporters.
It is estimated that at the start of the 1970s, the Sapê do Norte region was home to some 12,000 quilombo families distributed among more than 100 communities. The dynamics of the region began to change with the arrival of pulp and paper manufacturer Aracruz Celulose. The Brazilian federal government had at the time implemented legislation favoring eucalyptus farming that included fiscal incentives such as income tax exemptions for individuals and companies that invested in tree planting.
Laws were also enacted that made it more difficult for rural Black communities to remain on their land or even to obtain property titles. One example is Delegated Law 16, which served as a roadblock for Indigenous peoples and Quilombolas (quilombo community members) to be able to prove ownership of their territories.
During the same time period, acquisition of “unoccupied” land was facilitated, which led to a practice where many Aracruz employees requested titles to these land areas so they could later transfer them to the company’s name.
After losing their land, some Indigenous people and Quilombolas who remained in the region worked under precarious conditions in the pulp and paper production chain.
João Batista Guimarães is an agricultural technician and Quilombola leader in the Angelim 1 community. He tells Mongabay, “What they told us was that everyone would have a job and life would be good. For 10 years, this work relationship existed. In other words, even though the people from the quilombos left their land, they came back to plant eucalyptus, to cut eucalyptus or to raise seedlings. Such was the case of my mother, who raised eucalyptus seedlings for the pulp and paper sector from the age of 13. That’s how this empire was built.”
But before too long, the promises of wealth and development proved to be empty — with neither land nor work, around 90% of the quilombo population from Sapê do Norte was forced to move to the slums on the outskirts of large cities to survive.
“There were no real jobs, and people ended up living in the favelas. Many people from our own community left to live there,” recalls Linharinho community member Fernando dos Santos.
A Parliamentary Inquiry Commission established in 2002 by the Espírito Santo Legislative Assembly and decisions on two public civil actions carried out by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in 2013 and 2015 proved fraud in the acquisition of 30 rural properties by Aracruz during the 1970s. In 2009, the merger between Aracruz and Votorantim Celulose e Papel resulted in Fibria.
‘The people of Sapê do Norte are getting sick’
The spread of monoculture farming in the region and the subsequent loss of native forest led to a series of impacts on the way people in local traditional communities lived. The most serious were the disappearance of bodies of water, a drop in agricultural productivity and the extinction of native flora and fauna.
João Batista tells our reporter, “More than 170 wetlands, including creeks, rivers and over 2,000 strategic springs that fed main waterways, have disappeared over the last 60 years.”
“Of the more than 30 fish species who used to live in each of these rivers in Sapê do Norte, only three or four remain,” the agricultural technician adds.
Benedita Cassiano, who is related to Beatriz, tells Mongabay, “The poison that they throw in the soil goes straight into the water. We no longer wash our clothes in the river, and fishing is over, too, because we’re afraid of eating a fish that’s ruined.”
This restricted access to natural resources and concern over pesticide poisoning means that holding on to traditional ways of life is discouraging or even impossible.
“They [young people] no longer eat the food from our culture. We didn’t used to have these sicknesses we have now, and the food we ate was more like medicine for us — something good, healthy. But now, no one can hunt, no one can fish,” says Beatriz Cassiano.
The difficulties also impact the community’s ritual practices, recalls Elda Maria dos Santos. “We [traditional communities] need water for everything. Even our rituals can no longer be carried out with water. We used water for everything, to drink and for [spiritual] cleansing baths.”
João Batista Guimarães explains, “The people of Sapê do Norte are getting sick. We have cases of people who were hospitalized because they had been poisoned. This [comes] from the dusting and the 200 types of pesticides that were legalized in recent years by the previous administration [of former President Jair Bolsonaro].”
Unequal access to land has been the main cause of much agrarian conflict in Brazil. Pesticides have played a central role in these conflicts recently because of a significant rise in cases of contamination, especially because of the introduction of practices such as aerial pesticide application. In 2022, the number of people affected by crop dusting increased by 86% as compared with the previous year, and from 2010-19, an average of 15 people were victims of pesticide poisoning every day.
As a result of the process begun during the military dictatorship, the Quilombola communities in Sapê do Norte today live on small plots of land surrounded by extensive monoculture farms. It is a state of confinement that they refer to as “pressed.”
Despite being certified by the Palmares Cultural Foundation, the Linharinho Quilombola community is still waiting for the title to its territory. This is why they live in the middle of the eucalyptus farms that occupy 64% of their territory, which amounts to 2,244 hectares (5,545 miles), according to MapBiomas data. Only 4.3% of Brazil’s Quilombolas hold title to their land today. In Sapê do Norte, only four of the 32 community territories have been officially delimited.
This lack of land and the degradation of natural resources are forcing Quilombolas to seek sustenance for their basic needs outside their territories.
“We can’t even get the food we need here because the land is no longer in the hands of the Quilombola people, of the Indigenous people, not even of the family farmers. It is in the hands of pulp and paper and agribusiness. And the food that gets here for our people [to eat] comes from somewhere else. And it comes with poison in it,” explains João Batista.
The expectation of gaining title to their territories keeps hopes alive that those who migrated to the cities will someday be able to return to their traditional territories and live in a dignified way, Fernando dos Santos says. “We are trying to get our territory back so we can bring back a few of those people and show them that they can have a better life in the country.”
As long as the problem hasn’t been resolved, Beatriz Cassiano tells how the memory of their ancestors is what drives them to fight for their land and their good living. “It’s the resistance of our ancestors. We have to remain strong, to fight and not give up. Because if all of us give up and leave, it will all be over. We have to be part of the struggle, die in the struggle, so our young people can follow the same path. We are here, doing the things our ancestors did. Our parents struggled. Now they are gone and we have to stay here and fight the same fight so we know we can make it.”
Seated in the living room of her house as afternoon settles, Elda Maria echoes Cassiano’s words, sharing with us one of the songs she composed during the time when the Linharinho quilombo reclaimed its land: “We want justice on Earth, we already have justice in Heaven/We want land on Earth, we already have land in Heaven/Eucalyptus farms are not food/Rice, corn, yucca and beans are food.
Banner image: Elda Maria dos Santos shows a map of the Linharinho quilombo’s territory, whose inhabitants are still awaiting title to their land. Image courtesy of Giuliana Zamprogno.
Citation:
Montero de Araújo, D. S., Brito, R., Pereira-Figueiredo, D., dos Santos-Rodrigues, A., De logu, F., Nassini, R., … Calaza, K. C. (2022). Retinal Toxicity Induced by Chemical Agents. Int J Mol Sci. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331776/
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on our Brazil site on Apr. 11, 2024.
