Brazil seeks to learn Australian model of agchem registration

The approval of a registration of an agrochemical by the government of Australia takes three to six months. In order to get the patent of a product, whatever the product is, the wait is a maximum of 18 months. In Brazil, the line for both cases takes on average 10 years. Among the crucial points that take the country to low results, bureaucracy reigns.

"The slowness is due to Brazilian bureaucracy when a registration request of an agrochemical, for instance, passes through the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa), the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) and the National Institute of Natural and Renewable Resources (Ibama). Some products stay on the line waiting for over 10 years,” Eduardo Vaz, the analyst of Crop Protection at the Association of Corn and Soybean Growers of Mato Grosso (Aprosoja), said.

As a result of bureaucracy, the market has few options and centralization of products of very few brands, which generate higher prices. “The lack of competitiveness generates high production costs,” Vaz added.

A commission of Mapa, formed by federal representatives and class entities such as Aprosoja, visited Australia. Among the places visited were the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources of Australia, and the Australian Authority of Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine.

The visit by the legislators was to understand how the Law of Agrochemicals worked when there was a similar law under analysis of the Brazilian Congress. The bill number 3,200/2015 was authored by Covatti Filho, and aimed to regulate the use of phytosanitary products and products of environmental control.

According to Covatti Filho, the necessity of approval of a new law is due to the current lag, which would not be compatible with international agreements signed by Brazil, such as the Agreement on Health and Phytosanitary Measures, regulated in the country by the decree 1,355/94.

The commission visited the Department of Agriculture of Australia. According to Endrigo Dalcin, the president of Aprosoja, besides a rapid approval, another point was that the platform used in the country was electronic. “Everything is done with a lot of transparency and responsibility electronically by the Department of Agriculture [in Australia]. Hence, we have to now update the Brazilian law to make our country more competitive,” he emphasized.