"Pesticides released into Brazil’s Amazon to degrade rainforest and facilitate deforestation", 19 January 2022

Pesticides have been dropped from planes and even helicopters with the aim of evading IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, for years as a method to clear remote and hard-to-reach areas of the Amazon rainforest. That practice — used more frequently since 2018 — takes longer than clear-cut deforestation (the removal of all existing vegetation using heavy machinery). On the other hand, pesticide use cannot be detected via real-time satellite imagery.

According to IBAMA, some pesticides work as defoliants. The dispersion of those chemicals over native forest is the initial stage of deforestation, causing the death of leaves — and a good part of the trees. The material is burned and surviving trees are  removed with chainsaws and tractors...

Glyphosate, carbosulfan (prohibited on aerial spraying) and 2,4-D...were some of the pesticides found by the environmental agency in clearings in the Arc of Deforestation (the Legal Amazon area where the agricultural frontier advances towards the forest), according to a survey by Repórter Brasil and Agência Pública...

“Although that product is authorized to be applied by agricultural aircraft, its use is prohibited in native forests,” states one of the IBAMA agents in the video. “In addition, the containers [thrown on the soil] were not washed or disposed of properly, and the rains could end up transporting the residues. Adults, children [of farm workers] and animals live on the site. Everyone has their health put at risk"...

...IBAMA began to map those areas through INPE’s (Brazilian space agency) forest degradation alert system. When cross-referencing the data, the environmental agency found that many of the clearings were located on farms that were purchasing pesticides, mainly in the state of Mato Grosso.

Such properties, however, were livestock farms and not agricultural ones, so it did not make sense to purchase those products.

...“In addition to IBAMA, Embrapa [a public agricultural research company linked to the Ministry of Agriculture] and the Ministry of the Environment, among others, must participate in the effort of raising awareness and educating rural producers and the population. The agency alone in this battle is an inglorious fight”...