Minister celebrates the release of Glyphosate in Brazil
Brazilian Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi took to social media to celebrate a court decision overturning the suspension of registrations for products containing glyphosate; "Good news!!! The injunction prohibiting the use of glyphosate in Brazil has just been overturned," the minister wrote on his official Twitter account; the decision was overturned following an appeal filed on Wednesday by the Attorney General's Office (AGU).
SÃO PAULO/BRASÍLIA (Reuters) - The courts have overturned a decision from earlier this month that had suspended the registration of products containing glyphosate, an ingredient in herbicides widely used in Brazil, Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi said on Thursday.
"Good news!!! The injunction prohibiting the use of glyphosate in Brazil has just been overturned," the minister wrote on his official Twitter account.
The decision was overturned following an appeal filed on Wednesday by the Attorney General's Office (AGU).
In its appeal to the Federal Regional Court of the First Region (TRF-1), the Attorney General's Office (AGU) argued for the immediate revocation of the ban, highlighting that maintaining the impediment would generate "serious risk of harm to the economic order" and an impact of billions of reais on the trade balance.
Glyphosate is a herbicide used in important Brazilian crops, especially soybeans, Brazil's main export product and the world's largest exporter of the oilseed.
The injunction was overturned at a time when producers are preparing to plant the new crop in the coming weeks, which should bring more peace of mind to a sector that plans to sow a record area of more than 36 million hectares of soybeans in the 2018/19 season.
The Attorney General's Office (AGU) highlighted that, if the decision were not overturned, Brazil would be the first country to completely restrict the use of glyphosate, which would very likely lead most producers to stop using no-till farming and return to tilling the soil to some extent, with evident losses for the environment (erosion, decrease in soil organic matter content, increased fuel consumption, etc.).
Earlier this month, the substitute federal judge of the 7th Court of the Federal District, Luciana Raquel Tolentino de Moura, had ruled against granting new registrations for products containing glyphosate, abamectin, and thiram as active ingredients, which are present in agrochemicals, in a lawsuit filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office.
The case involves companies like Monsanto, acquired by Bayer, which markets, for example, genetically modified soybeans resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, planted on a large scale in Brazil.
In a recent technical note, the Ministry of Agriculture pointed out that glyphosate is a widely used herbicide in global agriculture, representing more than 50 percent of all pesticide and related product applications in Brazil and worldwide.