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By Yasmin D. Arquiza, VERA FILES
First of two parts
DAVAO CITY: Once a week, the drone of airplanes
shatters the early morning calm in Calinan, a cluster of small
farmlands in the hilly terrain around Mount Apo. It is the signal
for farmers to rush indoors or take cover and stop feeding
livestock, for women to pull down clothes hanging out to dry, and
for everyone to stay indoors, windows shut.
The small fixed-wing planes, known as crop
dusters, are owned by the huge banana plantations nearby, spraying
fungicide – a kind of pesticide that destroys fungus – on the
banana plants. Residents said anyone caught outdoors during an
aerial spray is likely to experience skin itching, eye irritation
and nausea. Water exposed to fungicide turns milky white, and
vegetables like malunggay curl up or retain a sticky residue.
Because of their rapid expansion, Davao’s big
banana plantations are encroaching into the city’s built-up areas
and farmlands like Calinan, where small farmers grow crops and
fruits, such as durian and lanzones that are sold in Davao City
markets. Communities around these plantations have been complaining
of health problems every time toxic pesticides would drift their
way.
Convinced of its ill effects on health and
environment, the city government of Davao passed an ordinance in
February last year banning the aerial spraying of pesticides. City
officials and small farmers have since been locked in a legal battle
with the banana companies over the ban.
When powerful banana growers questioned the
constitutionality of the ordinance, the lower court upheld the ban,
as did the Office of the Solicitor General.
It was only in the Court of Appeals where banana
companies scored a victory: The court issued an injunction to stop
the ban, allowing them to continue aerial spraying.
In July, the Davao City government, in alliance
with farmers, asked the Supreme Court to break the impasse in what
is now considered a landmark case that will test the power of the
local government to protect public welfare.
Aerial spraying is done on 1,800 hectares, about
one-third the total area of banana plantations in Davao City, said a
fact-finding report headed by City Planning and Development
coordinator Mario Luis Jacinto. Pilots guided by Global Positioning
System devices spray 30 liters of solution per hectare using
automated nozzles.
Although the Philippines has no specific law on
aerial spraying, government regulations require pilots to observe
buffer zones “20 to 30 meters away” from plantations, according
to regional officer Estrella Laquinta of the Fertilizer and
Pesticide Authority. The rule is meant to spare humans, animals and
plants from the ill effects of the spraying. But it is a rule only
on paper.
Rosita Bacalso, whose farm is just three meters
away from the Cavendish banana plantation of Davao Fruits Corp. (DFC),
said she saw white insects swarming toward her coconut trees from
the corporate farm when aerial spraying began in 2004. The coconut
fronds turned black and began falling off, while the young fruits
failed to mature fully. As a result, her usual income of P12,000
from coconuts fell to P3,000 every quarter.
On one occasion, Bacalso recalled, she looked in
horror at a glass of water from the tap after heavy rains washed off
pesticide residues from the gutter into their water tank. “Murag
gatas. Mao ni ang among ginainom [It was milky. Is this what we’ve
been drinking]?” Since then, the family has been fetching water
from the community tank 200 meters away.
Another farmer, Virginia Cata-ag, said members
of her family experienced eye irritation, nausea and skin diseases
after getting directly hit by pesticide spray. Her house in Barangay
Sirib is surrounded by a DFC banana plantation, the nearest border
just 10 meters away, and the company does not notify them when
aerial spraying would be done.
In Barangay Dacudao, longtime resident Cecilia
Moran said her family had to sell their cows that started getting
sick from grazing on pasture land hit by pesticide spray. Leafy
vegetables, such as malunggay and kamote tops, curled up or had
sticky residue that could not be washed off, forcing them to buy
from the market what had once been a daily supply of fresh produce
from their own farm.
Just a ‘perceived’ problem
The Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters
Association (PBGEA), together with DFC and Lapanday Agricultural and
Development Corp. (LADC), has dismissed the complaints against
aerial spraying of fungicide as “a perceived [but nonexisting]
problem.”
In a petition with the Regional Trial Court to
declare the city ordinance invalid, the banana companies claimed
that “fungicides are comparable to safe household items, such as
Nizoral anti-dandruff shampoo or anti-fungal preparations such as
Trosyd.”
The firms said aerial spraying of fungicide is
necessary to control the Black Sigatoka disease, which mainly
attacks leaves. If the infection spreads to fruits, the bananas can
“suffer from premature ripening, rendering them useless for
export.”
In the same petition, however, the banana
companies admitted that a simple way to eradicate the Sigatoka
disease without resorting to aerial spraying of pesticide “is to
cut off the leaves and prevent the spread of the disease to other
nearby banana plants.”
Reacting to the city government’s report that
other banana plantations use truck-mounted boom spray to manually
apply 80 to 200 liters of fungicide solution per hectare, the
companies said this method only covers up to 60 hectares a day,
compared to aerial spraying that covers 250 hectares in three hours.
“Aerial spraying is the method of choice
considering that it is the safest, most effective and most accurate
method of applying the water cocktail containing the fungicide,”
the banana firms said in their petition.
The banana companies also disputed testimonies
of residents that they do not issue warnings. They said an alarm is
sounded 15 minutes before the planes start spraying fungicide and
notices about spraying schedules are placed in strategic areas.
They added the first three loads are sprayed
near the boundaries at daybreak to avoid foot traffic, before the
planes start spraying toward the interior of the plantation. In
Calinan, people usually wake up and go to their farms at dawn.
In an affidavit supporting the banana firms’
petition, plant pathologist Anacleto Pedrosa of the AMS Group of
Companies, which includes DFC, asserted that fungicide spray has
“no adverse effects” on the skin or respiratory system.
“Exposure must be by ingestion. An adult
person has to directly ingest 425 milliliters of fungicide [which is
more than a bottle of beer] to cause some adverse effect,” he
said.
Pedrosa also downplayed the health risks
reported by anti-aerial spraying advocates, claiming that “a
person can eat one million apples [directly treated with Mancozeb] a
day and still show no adverse effect from the ingestion.”
Mancozeb is the active ingredient in Dithane
600, a fungicide sprayed in banana plantations, with up to 1.5
liters used for every 30-liter solution, according to Pedrosa.
No safe dose
In pushing for the ordinance, the joint
committees on environment, agriculture and health of the city
council rejected the banana companies’ arguments. Instead, they
put more weight on the statements of Lynn Panganiban, head of the
National Poison Control and Management Center at the University of
the Philippines.
“There is no such thing as a safe dose when it
comes to pesticides,” Panganiban said. “Pesticide vapor is the
best predator of the child.”
Anti-aerial spraying advocates often show a
photograph of children walking to school while a crop duster flies
over a nearby banana plantation in a Davao City suburb.
“The theory now of cancer development is a
one-cell-hit theory, meaning one molecule in our organ could be hit
and this can already produce clonal transformation which will
eventually develop into cancer,” Panganiban added.
At a forum in UP Diliman in July, Panganiban
said various studies have linked Mancozeb to health risks, such as
skin diseases, thyroid gland disorders and cancer.
Saligan, a legal assistance group helping the
farmers in their complaints against the banana companies, showed a
specimen label of the fungicide Dithane in court that clearly stated
it “may cause irritation to nose, throat, eyes and skin.” The
label also contains the advisory, “Do not breathe dust or spray
mist.”
Several health studies in recent years have
shown abnormally high rates of cancer, anemia and skin ailments
among residents living beside banana plantations. In a 2006 study,
the Kalusugan Alang sa Bayan health group documented nine patients
who had died of cancer in a plantation site in Davao City. Seven of
them had been working for a long time in the plantation, up to 29
years in one case.
Felixberto Batuhan, who used to work in a
plantation, cleaning canals and harvesting bananas for three years,
blames his employer for the loss of his eyesight. He recalls the
pesticide spray getting into the workers’ breakfast, as they had
to be inside the plantation at 6 a.m. He is now one of the blind
masseurs working in Davao City’s malls.
Even the city government’s Jacinto report,
which has been widely criticized for allegedly favoring the banana
companies, validated the complaints of farmers on the impact of
aerial spraying on coconut trees, saying the fronds had become
susceptible to attacks.
“This can happen when the fungus Metarhizium
anisopliae, which infects and kills the Rhinoceros beetle, is
eliminated or killed by the fungicides that drift to the coconut.
Thus, about three to five rows of coconuts adjacent to the banana
plantations commonly manifest Rhinoceros beetle-damaged leaves,”
the report said.
The city ordinance banning aerial spraying had
started on a milder note with a resolution from city Councilor
Nenita Orcullo in 2004 seeking to regulate the practice. Orcullo,
who lives in a community where aerial spraying is done, changed the
proposal to a total ban a year later following widespread clamor
from affected residents in various places.
Earth Day in April 2006 saw the legislation’s
supporters coming together under the loose alliance Mamamayan Ayaw
sa Aerial Spray (meaning, citizens against aerial spray), which
received logistical support from the environmental group Interface
Development Interventions.
These groups found an influential ally in
televangelist Apollo Quiboloy, whose prayer center in Calinan is
adjacent to banana plantations. A video made by his television
company showing the misty trail of the crop dusters and calling for
a stop to the practice has been made into an anti-aerial spraying
campaign material on the Internet.
Quiboloy was photographed standing beside Davao
City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte when he signed the ordinance banning
aerial spraying in the metropolis.
To be continued
Editor’s note: VERA Files is written by
veteran journalists taking a deeper look into current issues. Vera
is Latin for “true.”
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