Vol. 46 No. especial 2 jun (2022): Health, pesticides, and agroecology

“This special issue of ‘Saúde em Debate’, whose theme is ‘Health, Pesticides, and Agroecology’ and which was built to contribute to a strategic debate, seeking to deepening the understanding of more critical theoretical, practical, and epistemological approaches aimed at strengthening agroecology and reducing the harmful effects of pesticides on health, the environment, and society. We sought to reflect on the relationship between these elements and the field of public health, with a view to promoting a transition towards food systems that provide socio-environmental justice, food and nutrition security and sovereignty, sustainable territories, and health” (excerpt from the Presentation of the journal signed by the invited scientific editors Guilherme Franco Netto, Aline do Monte Gurgel and André Campos Burigo).

It gathers manuscripts with the following themes: agribusiness in the Cerrado; indigenous territories and socio-environmental determination of health; exposure to pesticides in municipalities in Mato Grosso; soy production, pesticides and participation in environmental health in Uruguay; consumption and impacts of pesticides in Colombia; women farmers and pesticides in family farming; pesticides and health of rural workers in Pernambuco; empowerment and collective construction in the face of risk situations in the use of pesticides; collective health and agroecology; medicinal plants in agroforestry in the promotion of healthy and sustainable territories; family farming and school meals in Rio Grande do Norte; purchase of food from family farming for school meals in Brazil; child exposure to pesticides in the city of Rio de Janeiro; commercialization of pesticides and the chemical-dependent model of agriculture in Brazil; aerial spraying of pesticides in a rural community in the context of conflict; tax benefits for pesticides, agricultural sustainability, and health in Brazil; Healthy and Sustainable Territories in the Federal District: agroecology and the impact of pesticides; public health and agroecology: sustainable and healthy food systems; voices and actions of the semiarid: invitations to the decolonization of the scientific field; critical toxicology applied to pesticides; food sovereignty, a therapeutic strategy to recover health in the face of the advance of agro-industrial extractivism; mental health, human rights and environmental justice: the ‘chemicalization of life’; health promotion and peasant resistance; agroecology and collective health in the construction of pesticides as a public health problem in Brazil; from pandemic to agroecology; agribusiness productivity and its externalities from the perspective of biopower; pesticides and cancer development in the context of public health; Covid-19 and hunger: agroecological future; agroecology in the Brazilian public policy agenda; socio-environmental and sanitary disasters in agribusiness; pesticides, health outcomes, and agroecology in Brazil; health and sanitation of a quilombola community in the surroundings of the capital of Brazil; Chácara Bindu, an agroecology experience; health surveillance of populations exposed to pesticides; organic street markets as a food supply and health promotion policy; book reviews ‘Agrobiodiversity and farmers’ rights’, by Juliana Santilli, and ‘Health, ecologies and emancipation: alternative knowledge in times of crisis(s)’, by Marcelo Firpo Porto, Diogo Ferreira Rocha and Marina Tarnowiski Fasanello.