Argentina's province approves new regulatory framework of agrochemicals

The Chamber of Senators of the Entre Ríos province in Argentina has sanctioned a law that establishes a juridical framework for use of agrochemicals and biologicals for agricultural production. The director of the Third District of the Argentine Agrarian Federation, Elvio Guía, has adverted that “half of the province will stay without agriculture” with this new legislation.

Without an absolute majority, the pro-government senators gave a green light for the project that establishes how the chemical and biological products can be used for protection, growth, development, storage and transport of all types of agricultural production as well as for foresting, forage and food processing with the goal of protecting human health, biodiversity and natural resources, taking into account a cautious and preventive focus as the legal principles of the national normative.

The House of Representatives will analyze the definitive sanction of the initiative that band the registrations and use of agrochemicals that do not have methods of degradation of its components; possessing characteristics teratogenic, carcinogenic or mutagenic; their formulas are secret, its permanent components or technical or operational features are not declared; or those that science cannot demonstrate the absence of threats of serious or irreversible damage to health, ecosystems and the environment.

Besides, the agency of enforcement will be the Secretariat of Environment Sustainability and also accounted to classify the products. The farmers of the province protested against the new legislation arguing that even “citrus could not be produced because they need spraying”. “This law has nothing to do with reality,” said Guía.