Brazil is the world champion of agro-pesticides. Since 2010, more than one million tons of pesticides have been sprayed annually in agriculture in the South American country. As a result, it bears the inglorious title of the world's largest consumer of pesticides: on average, 7.3 liters of agricultural poison are used for every person in Brazil. And with Tereza Cristina, an avowed lobbyist on agricultural poisons has become Minister of Agriculture, who together with the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has released more agricultural poisons than ever before since he took office in 2019: 1,635 new pesticides between Jan. 1, 2019, and Feb. 25, 2022.

Many of the agricultural chemicals allowed in Brazil, for example, are banned in the EU. However, this does not stop European corporations such as Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, for example, from selling pesticides with substances banned in the EU to or in Brazil. That is why many non-governmental organizations here in Germany are calling for a rapid ban on the export of such pesticides, a demand that even made it into the coalition agreement of the new German government. But when will this finally become concrete?

Our speaker Larissa Bombardi is a professor of geography at the University of São Paulo (USP). Actually, as she has done since her appointment to the internationally renowned university in 2007, she would continue to teach in the field, conduct research and publish her studies on the geography of pesticide use in Brazil and its links to the EU. But after her publications were reported in the media, she received anonymous phone calls in Brazil, indirect threats, and her home was broken into. In the face of this climate of targeted intimidation, Bombardi went into exile with her children to Brussels, where she continues to work on the consequences of the pesticide business in Brazil - a business that also has something to do with Europe: for example, with the pesticide producers Bayer and BASF and their ruthless business with agricultural chemicals.

Our second speaker, Stig Tanzmann, has visited agroecological, i.e. pesticide-free, projects in various regions of Brazil and, in his work in the policy department of Bread for the World, is intensively concerned with the question of how agroecology can be strengthened nationally and internationally and how the use of pesticides can be phased out. Among other things, he will analyze what expectations arise in view of the coalition agreement of the German government regarding the strengthening of agroecology and provide an international contextualization.

Finally, Marius Stelzmann from "Coordination gegen BAYER-Gefahren" will provide an update on BAYER's Annual General Meeting to be held virtually in Leverkusen on April 29, 2022.

Moderation: Vinícius Mendes

The event will be held in Portuguese and German with consecutive interpretation, free admission!

Prior registration is not necessary.