Both traditional and extensive agriculture would not reach their current production levels if agrochemicals were no longer used. At this stage of population growth and technological development, agrochemicals have ended up occupying an essential place in sustaining the profitability of agriculture. In the high Andean areas, tubers such as potatoes and grains such as quinoa; in the inter-Andean valleys, vegetables such as onion and garlic, cereals such as corn, wheat, etc. and fruit trees such as peach and apple trees, and in extensive production regions such as soybeans and wheat, they cannot do without the use of fungicides, insecticides, herbicides and a series of other inputs (nutrients, hormones, etc.) or additives (amino acids ), to the point that this agriculture has become a kind of “dependent chemical”. There would be little point in breaking down this relationship, crop by crop, because on average it occurs in some more than in others, from “use” to “abuse.” In this relationship framework, the producer has built his family economy apparently sustainable and exceptionally successful, as well as has generated in his social environment –associations, markets, etc.- and economic, also an image of sustainability, but temporary and despicable.
The relationship between agrochemicals and agriculture has a very ancient history. But, it is with modernization, which becomes a technology almost indissoluble to the set of other technologies that continually emerge, now as products of biotechnology, such as seeds, fertilizers, etc., that together make producers become feel conditioned to its use by the reward of high productivity. That is, there is a kind of imposition of a model of technological dependence, but one of them could not be used without the other, because the result will not be the same. For example, the use of hybrid seeds would not achieve the expected result without applying the rest of the ingredients of the “package” such as pesticides-fungicides, etc.-, fertilization, hormones, pH correctors, etc., and all this, “Married” to a type and quality of equipment for its application. In short, a whole “package” with the name of agrochemicals that are used to achieve the current productivity of tubers, vegetables, cereals, fruit trees, etc. Or, in other words, agriculture, trapped, in a model or system of technologies that act intertwined.
For these technologies to be seen as “essential” in agriculture, it is because in practice producers see their investment and effort translated into greater productivity and economic return. Therefore, it can be considered that this type of technology in the “short term” shows a successful impact. But, in the medium and long term, producers are also aware that they become promoters of a systematic deterioration in the quality of the environment in general.
On the other hand, the short-term success of these technologies also lies in the fact that the soil and water resources come from processes of continuous “depletion”, because agriculture in the highlands and inter-Andean valleys is not only from the last decades, but that comes from much earlier to the use of modern technologies. Likewise, State policies, to promote food production, improve the living conditions of producers and the national economy, are also a factor of pressure to the intensive use of soils, indiscriminate use of water, seeds, etc. ., with consequences that generated the “ideal” conditions for a complete acceptance for the use of this type of technology. Faced with this panorama of dependent agriculture, thinking about disarming the scheme by removing the agrochemical, simply, will be like trying to remove productivity and the economy of life. Therefore, it would not be so simple, but rather complex. And the way, perhaps it should go to change the scheme or paradigm. A new scheme that contains “technological alternatives” capable of sustaining productivity and that has the capacity of a State that, through its institutions, can generate technological alternatives. But, the State, since it had its only experience with IBTA, repeats the model, and, in essence, never proposed a new vision despite the discourses on mother earth, food security and sovereignty, etc. Meanwhile, the technologies of the agriculture-agrochemical relationship will continue to be in force, sustaining productivity and the economy, but deepening the crisis of ecological disaster and the deterioration of soil-water resources.
FORUM
Mario Coca Morante
Teacher. Faculty of Agricultural, Livestock and Forestry Sciences UMSS
[email protected]
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