Tecnologia, ideologia e agrotóxicos: uma reflexão sobre o emprego de agrotóxicos na cadeia agrícola brasileira e seus aspectos ideológicos

Abstract

The issue of pesticides as a widely employed technology in the Brazilian agricultural chain raises discussions and antagonisms anchored, on the one hand, in the country’s dependence on a commodity export-oriented agriculture and, on the other, in the criticism of the deleterious effects generated on public health and environmental preservation by their massive use. This antagonism also manifests in the political sphere, as legislative proposals are either based on the need to facilitate pesticide use in order to reduce costs and increase production, or on the need to restrict their use as a means of mitigating their consequences. Within this context, ideology emerges as a central element in analyzing the material conditions that sustain the debate on pesticide use in Brazilian agriculture, as well as those that legitimize it as a necessary technological form. This thesis argues that pesticides are instrumentalized under a concept of technology ideologically legitimized in favor of economic centrality, despite the resulting impacts on life and the environment. To this end, under the epistemological perspective of historical materialism, the general aim of this study is to examine pesticide use in the Brazilian agricultural chain from a critical standpoint, considering the ideological aspects that foster their extensive application in agribusiness. Accordingly, in addition to a socio-historical analysis that seeks to understand the development, material bases, and contradictions of pesticide use in Brazil, Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis will also be employed as a means of apprehending the ideological forms present in discourses that advocate the extensive use of pesticides in the country.