In 2015, a beekeeper from the community of Bolonchén de Rejón, in Hopelchén – a municipality 94 kilometers from the capital of Campeche – found that about twenty of his hives had died. Near the land where he had his apiary was a watermelon crop and he believes that the pesticide used to fumigate the fruit was what killed his bees. The product had been spread from the air with a small plane.
“They planted watermelon about 300 meters away, they fumigated it and the 20 colonies died,” recalls the affected beekeeper, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
By then, the Collective of Mayan Communities of the Chenes, made up of beekeepers, settlers and organizations of Hopelchén that fight for the defense of the Mayan territory, had already detected plane flights to fumigate extensive soybean crops from the air. The collective began to pay attention to these flights when it noticed the affectation in the bees and when the smell of pesticides began to be reported in the communities.
“Probably a little earlier there were already aerial fumigations, but there had not been such clear affectations and they were not so frequent,” says agronomist Irma Gómez, advisor to the collective. Although they do not have an accurate count of the flights, the members of the collective did see how the aerial fumigations were increasing; by 2017, they identified that they were made in almost the entire municipality.
In addition, they have documented that between 2013 and 2018 one thousand 500 to one thousand 700 hives were lost.
Hopelchén is a municipality of 42,000 inhabitants that gained notoriety in recent years for its opposition to the planting of genetically modified soybeans, which the Mexican government had authorized the Company Monsanto. But the use of GMOs is just one part of a larger problem, caused by the excessive growth of industrial production of monocultures of soybeans, sorghum and vegetables.
Soybeans alone went from occupying 7,469 hectares in 2010 to covering 33,080 by 2020, an area almost five times larger, according to data from the Agri-Food and Fisheries Information Service.
With this growth, and because of their ability to fumigate large areas in less time, airplanes have become an option, despite the impact caused by aerial spraying of pesticides on the environment and people’s health.
For the beekeepers of Hopelchén, the main concern is the risk that the aerial spraying of pesticides implies for bees, an animal that is a source of income for about one thousand 500 families and that makes it the second municipality of Campeche with the highest production of honey. For 2018, more than one thousand 940 tons were produced, with a production value of 68 million pesos, according to the most recent data from the National Atlas of Bees and Beekeeping Derivatives.
In addition to being the economic support of many Mayan families in Hopelchén, bees are also a symbol of identity and their struggle for territory. The reflection on its importance led a group of women to work on useful solutions for communities in the face of the impacts of pesticides and their aerial spraying. The pillars of their work are the sensitization of people about the dangers of agrotoxics and the training they provide in agroecological food and medicinal plants, as a way to raise awareness about the importance of environmental preservation.
Hives of mellifera apis in a Mayan crop in the community of Huechil. PHOTO: Lizeth Ovando
Fumigate from the air, faster and with less control
The aerial application of agricultural pesticides is an activity allowed in Mexico, regulated by the Official Mexican Standard NOM-052-FITO-1995. But it only stipulates requirements and technical specifications, such as the information pilots must record about the products they will use. It does not mention anything about the minimum distance that must exist between flight zones, villages or bodies of water. Nor does it speak of supervisory or surveillance actions.
Irma Gómez, the advisor of the Collective of Mayan Communities of the Chenes, considers that the NOM is “deficient” because it does not contemplate the environmental and human health impacts of these sprays.
The collective has registered fumigations in crops near 15 communities of Hopelchén, being notorious the proximity to the towns of Ich-Ek, San Francisco Suc-Tuc, Huechil and the municipal capital. Also, in 2019, it reported aerial fumigations in areas adjacent to a higher education school.
Those who live in villages near agro-industrial crops have identified that, when the harvest season is going to begin, flights for fumigation are more recurrent.
“When they plant soybeans they fumigate I think two or three times a la week,” says a beekeeper from San Juan Bautista Sahcabchén, a community in Hopelchén that borders extensive monocultures that this spring are rice, but in the past were soy.
He and other beekeepers point out that those who use the planes to spray are Mennonite producers. According to an article by researcher Flavia Echánove, most Mennonites in Hopelchén grow between 100 and 400 hectares of soybeans individually, but there are those who work 800 hectares or more. Not for nothing are those who contributed 90% of soybean production in 2018, according to the same study.
The arrival of this group to Hopelchén dates from the 1980s and, although they live in separate settlements from the rest of the population (called camps), they are already part of everyday life in the municipality. That closeness also makes those who point out their practices fear reprisals and therefore ask not to be identified.
“About 10 years ago, these fumigations began with airplanes, which I think that apart from the fact that it is cheaper because they advance more, in one day two or three fields are fumigated; one hour, two hours, they have already fumigated an entire surface,” says the beekeeper. He also relates that before the fumigations of these crops were done with tractors or manual sprinklers, but the Mennonites changed those methods for the use of airplanes.
“Most Mennonites now use not only here at the head, but even up the mountain where there is clearing, up there they get to spray with airplanes, so they do it as fast as possible because with a tractor, when are they going to do it if they have large extensions? On the other hand, with the plane they pass and after a while they already loaded again, “says another beekeeper from the community of El Poste.
The way of spraying has changed because the growing areas are getting bigger and larger and aerial fumigation is cheaper than terrestrial fumigation: with a single aerial application, more land can be covered than on land, explains engineer Irma Gómez.
“It’s basically an economic issue, a cost issue,” he says.
Three basic ways of applying a pesticide can be distinguished according to the equipment used: manual, which is done using a backpack operated with a hand lever; land, which uses vehicles self-propelled or propelled by another machine, and air, by aircraft.
For aerial application, NOM-052-FITO-1995 establishes that only a certificate of compliance must be obtained and a notice of start of operation must be presented, in addition to being registered in a phytosanitary directory.
In Hopelchén, there is only one person with current certification to apply pesticides by air, Adolf Froese Wiebe, who also has only one aircraft registered, according to the Directory of companies with current certification for the aerial application of agricultural pesticides. His track is located in a Mennonite field near Sahcabchén.
Froese Wiebe did not agree to an interview.
But according to the Chenes Maya Communities Collective, at least five different light aircraft are used to spray agro-industrial crops in Hopelchén. He attributes the ownership of some of them to the Santa Fe Mennonite field, where as you pass you can see two parked planes. Other aircraft, according to the collective, belong to the El Cenit ranch and the La Sierrita company. None of these social reasons is listed as certified in Campeche in the Directory of companies.
Political Animal sought the National Service of Health, Safety and Agrifood Quality (Senasica), the entity in charge of supervising compliance with NOM-052-FITO-1995, to know what actions it has taken to supervise the aerial fumigations in Hopelchén and particularly on the light aircraft that would be operating without certification. At press time, there was no response.
Garbage from pesticide canisters dumped on the road to Huechil. PHOTO: Lizeth Ovando
Controlled or out-of-control fumigations?
The NOM that regulates aerial fumigations also establishes that the pilots of the aircraft that spray must keep a control log. This log must include information such as the commercial and common name of the products used, the doses used, the pests to be eradicated, as well as the land and the crop where it is applied. It also notes that pilots should apply only pesticides with current registration and that the application team should meet technical specifications for efficient implementation, although those specifications are not detailed. Nor is it not detailed how its compliance is monitored.
Political Animal requested Senasica, through a request for public information, the control logs in order to know which pesticides have been applied by air in hopelchén’s crops and how muchs sprays have been made. The institution responded that those who had the attribution of having these logs were the pilots who carry out the fumigations.
Irma Gomez says they have also tried to access that information, without success.
“There are no such logs, we have requested them several times, and there is not, there is no information. That is, even though the people who apply are obliged to hand them over, apparently they do not deliver them because they have never given us this information,” he says. “So, there is not much control really of aerial fumigations and it applies more to the convenience of the agricultural producer, without taking into account the impact that is generating, both environmental and to the villages, to human health.”
Senasica also did not respond to this allegation.
The NOM, in addition, does not oblige to notify nearby populations about an aerial spray, only establishes minimum distances between the runway and towns or bodies of water, but not between these sites and points of application, nor does it detail how it is ensured that the pesticide does not extend beyond the site where it was authorized to spray it.
Another beekeeper from the Sahcabchén community says he worked on a Mennonite’s crops. He says that when the flights were made to fumigate, he, from the ground, had to place flags to mark the passage of the plane.
“We also put ourselves with some flags to direct where the plane was going to cross and when it is close you get off so that it does not jump and cross,” he says. One of the challenges was to calculate the direction of the wind to be on the opposite side and thus prevent the products from reaching it. He says he never got “liquid,” referring to the pesticides they applied.
“Well, it feels, of course it feels and as we have to be, not where the wind is, but on the contrary,” he says.
Wind variability is an impossible factor to control when spraying pesticides. And it is not the only one, since other climatic elements such as wind speed, ambient temperature and humidity, as well as the characteristics of the product and even the mode of application can affect its effectiveness and disperse the product outside the target. This phenomenon in which pesticide particles disperse out of their target is known as drift.
There are estimates that only 25% to 32% of pesticides hit their target or are retained by the plants they target, according to an article by Argentine chemical engineer Marcos Tomasoni, who has studied the issue of pesticide drifts in depth.
The problem with drifts is not only that the rest of the pesticide that does not hit the target affects other organisms, but the dimension it can cover. A pesticide thrown from a height of three meters can reach up to 4,800 meters from the application site, under optimal weather conditions (although that can change if those conditions are modified). In addition, drifts can be instantaneous or last up to years after application, according to Tomasoni’s article.
Damage everywhere
In Hopelchén, the death of bees set off alerts about how pesticides were being used on agro-industrial crops. Although aerial application of pesticides has not been proven to be the sole and direct cause of bee loss, for beekeepers there are clues to believe that this is the reason.
“They are areas where they are closer or where you can correlate an application and a very stuck death,” explains Irma Gómez. “Beekeepers report this type of damage, both low in the population and immediate or almost immediate death, that is, in the span of a week the bulk of their bees die, and that is not only an apiary, there are several apiaries in the same region, and that is when it adds up.”
The coincidence between dates of cultivation and application of pesticides with the moments in which problems with bees are observed is another indicator to relate it.
Pesticides have the function of selectively killing living organisms that want to be controlled or eradicated, explains Jaime Rendón von Osten, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Campeche who has investigated the environmental impact of pesticide use. However, the academic adds, their risk is that they also annihilate or affect species that are not necessarily their target.
Something that changed this principle was the introduction of transgenic soy, as it was designed to resist the herbicide glyphosate, which has been classified by the World Health Organization as a probable carcinogen for humans. Both products were introduced by the Monsanto company.
In Hopelchén glyphosate is used and this does not stay only in crops, as Rendón von Osten showed in a study in 2017, when finding that the pesticide persisted in groundwater, drinking water and in the urine of residents of several communities. One of the relevant aspects that he detected is that the volume of the herbicide registered peaks that coincided with the time when the crops are prepared.
But glyphosate is not the only pesticide used in Hopelchén’s agro-industrial crops. Other active ingredients that both Rendón von Osten and the Collective of Mayan Communities of the Chenes have detected are the insecticides carbofuran, imidacloprid and chlorpyrifos, all highly toxic. Several of these products are even considered highly hazardous by the WHO and the International Pesticide Action Network, and banned in several countries.
Several studies have analyzed the effects of these pesticides on bees. Some have linked their high mortality rate to larval poisoning by glyphosate, imidacloprid and chlorpyrifos. Imidacloprid has also been found to affect bees’ longevity, behavior, brain development and brood production, as well as their ability to navigate, making it impossible for them to return to their hive.
In the case of glyphosate, Rendón von Osten explains that it affects the intestinal flora of bees and makes them more prone to varroasis, a disease that affects orientation and decreases their honey production, among other effects.
Other pesticides detected in Hopelchén crops are atrazine, which can slow the normal growth of babies if pregnant women are exposed to it, and paraquat, whose inhalation can cause lung damage, as well as kidneys, liver and esophagus. Meanwhile, malathion is also considered a probable carcinogen by the WHO, and chlorpyrifos affects the nervous system and can produce everything from headaches to seizures or death.
The ecological impacts of pesticides go beyond bees and humans. In fact, they can affect entire ecosystems, as they cause damage or even the death of animal species, generate the imbalance of plant species, reduce the fixation of oxygen in the soil and damage soil microorganisms.
The mechanization of agricultural fumigations through the use of light aircraft is an important issue for the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), given the lack of control at the time of spraying and the effects it causes, especially to pollinators, says in an interview its owner, María Luisa Albores.
“When we talk about this, we are talking about the care of pollinators because they are the ones that are most affected,” he says.
Leydi’s melipona bees inside his jobon. They open them only two or three times a year. PHOTO: Lizeth Ovando
According to Albores, Semarnat has carried out studies in Hopelchén in soybean and corn crops, as well as in the soil, air and some bee samples, to analyze the presence of agrochemicals in them, and is carrying out others to know their impacts on people’s health.
An inspection by the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection and the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change in soybean and corn crops in Hopelchén to detect transgenic crops – carried out in November 2021 and whose results were recently published – found used glyphosate containers in the vicinity of soybean crops, which “indicate a possible illegal use and without technical supervision, “”. according to the document provided by Semarnat.
“But after these studies we have to get to counteract directly, in the direction of what we have to do as an authority to no longer allow this,” says Albores.
The official adds that Semarnat is directly working on the issue of pesticides and the technical use of fumigations (such as the use of light aircraft) in the technical table formed as a result of the presidential decree for the gradual replacement of glyphosate, published in the Official Gazette of the Federation in December 2020.
Knowing the effects of pesticides on human health is not simple, says researcher Rendón von Osten. One of the limitations is that, contrary to what is assumed, many products do not accumulate in the body, so it is not possible to detect them; however, its toxicity can have long-term effects.
Its impact is noticeable when someone becomes intoxicated. The problem is that many people don’t go to the doctor, says Rendón von Osten. In addition to the health risk, one consequence of this is that there is no record of such cases.
During 2020, the federal Ministry of Health recorded 2,049 cases of pesticide poisoning throughout the country. Only 18 of them occurred in Campeche, well below other states with an agricultural vocation such as Jalisco (329 cases) or Sinaloa (119 cases).
Residents of the communities of Sahcabchén and Huechil report cases of people exposed to aerial spraying of pesticides that were intoxicated. One of them was a boy who, excited to see the plane, went out into the street when it was spraying. No one had warned the villagers that it was a fumigation, much less about the risks if they were exposed.
Local and community solutions
In 2000, the Muuch Kambal organization was born in Hopelchén, which initially focused on women to promote their participation in organizational processes. But as its members approached the Mayan communities of the municipality, they identified that people had other concerns about things that were happening.
The death of bees was the trigger to see a bigger problem, says Andrea Pech, one of the members of Muuch Kambal. “We started to see a lot more than just bee killings.” One of them was that pesticides were being used, which they call “poisons.”
Based on the problems they detected, the members of Muuch Kambal structured the four lines of work on which they currently focus: organization, health, agriculture and youth. In the health line, they address the impact of pesticides on the environment and food, explains Socorro Pech, another of the four women who support the core of the organization, which currently works with adults, children, and young people in 10 communities of Hopelchén.
It aims to propose solutions that work at the local level. “If the problem is the production with many pesticides and all this agro-industrial production, then what do we propose to change that part?” says Andrea.
What they did was identify, from talking directly to people, what the common health problems were. Obesity and diabetes were recurrent and that gave them the idea of promoting a healthy diet as a way to lead people to analyze and reflect on other problems associated with food production, such as the contamination of crops by pesticides.
Another strategy has been to give workshops to women on medicinal plants, which works for them to make their own gardens and have natural remedies on hand, but also to lead them to reflect on the importance of bees as environmental preservatives.
“Medicinal plants exist because there are bees that pollinate those plants and bees are key in this wanting to change things, because bees are the ones that pollinate both medicinal plants and all the crops we eat,” says Leonor Pech, also a member of Muuch Kambal.
In their work in communities, they also provide information on the harms of pesticides, especially to women.
“We can’t guarantee that pesticides are actually directly affecting people and giving them cancer, for example. Because that’s a very sensitive issue,” says Andrea Pech. “But we can do an analysis of the problems it generates, for example, in people’s health, how those pesticides enter our body, if we breathe it, we are in direct contact. Women, for example, when washing husbands’ clothes come into direct contact because they are the ones who fumigate and end up bathed with pesticides.”
Teresita de Jesús Noh is one of the women who have been trained by Muuch Kambal. She is a health promoter for the community of Huechil and her work is key to knowing the health problems of her neighbors in the town. In the workshops on medicinal plants he has learned how natural and accessible products can help as remedies or in treatments of some diseases.
Hives of mellifera apis within the mountain. His beekeeper explained that inside each box there can be up to 20 thousand bees, each with its queen bee. PHOTO: Lizeth Ovando
The workshops have also sensitized her to the importance of these plants and how deforestation and the use of pesticides threaten their preservation.
“If all these types of plants die, we, although we know how to handle them, we will not be able to acquire them because, for example, the rubbing with the plane not only will it be thrown where the sow is, but the wind will throw it more on the outside, and if there is a medicinal plant, dry it will remain, and while we will not be able to give it the use we need, “he reflects.
The members of Muuch Kambal have also tried to make up for the lack of information on cases of pesticide poisoning that, they believe, there are in the municipality. According to Andrea Pech, the doctors of the health houses in the communities do not record them in detail. For lThey organized forums with local doctors and doctors and managed to get them to agree to record, for example, what were the most common ailments that came to them in times of planting, he says.
But the pandemic stopped this initiative.
“We were just starting to work on that and agree with them when the pandemic hits,” he says. “Our allies that we had here in Hopelchén, the medical allies because they changed their position, the priority was pandemic and this was slowed down a bit.”
Modifying the NOM, a solution in the making
The problem of aerial fumigations does not affect only the beekeepers of Hopelchén, and that is why in the Yucatan Peninsula beekeepers have organized to denounce this practice and demand its prohibition.
The Mayan Alliance for Kabnáalo’on Bees, which brings together Mayan beekeeping cooperatives, collectives and producers from Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo, is part of a working group for the modification of the NOM that regulates aerial fumigations. This group is coordinated by Senasica and involves both the government and civil society, explains Irma Gómez, who is also an advisor to the alliance.
The Collective of Mayan Communities of the Chenes, of which Muuch Kambal is a member, participates in this alliance.
The alliance’s bet is that aerial fumigations will be totally prohibited in the country. The only exception they would contemplate is their application in extraordinary conditions, duly justified and that cannot be applied to less than 5 thousand meters of urban areas, schools, bodies of water or apiaries, explains Irma Gómez.
“It’s been a long discussion, because it’s a very poor standard, which basically focuses only on the issue of planes and runways and I didn’t see anything else about the impact,” he says.
While a possible modification germinates that would have repercussions throughout the country, in Hopelchén they continue to build solutions in community.
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