Trabalho e natureza: sobre os impactos socioambientais dos agrotóxicos em trabalhadores rurais de Mato Grosso nos anos de 2006 a 2017

Abstract

Brazil, during the Workers' Party governments, consolidated itself in the international division of labor as a supplier of raw materials. Benefiting from the international prices of primary products, the PT governments resumed a productivist development benchmark, based on large-scale exports, economic growth and the expansion of consumption. A hallmark of this period, which intensified after the parliamentary coup and the arrival of Michel Temer, was the generalization of the agribusiness model that adopted an agricultural and agrarian system based on land concentration, monoculture, wage labor, the use of a technological package and large-scale production. As for the technological package, the intense use of pesticides stands out, which reflects the productive logic in the field, which seeks to maximize the economic efficiency of agricultural activity, enhancing its profitability. Behind the idea of modernization and innovation, the ecocidal function of pesticides, which is not restricted to the control of pests considered harmful, but causes socio-environmental impacts, by generating negative externalities for the environment and for the health of rural workers. In this scenario, the research aims to understand whether Labor Law exerts its protective function towards rural workers who handle pesticides in the state of Mato Grosso during the years 2006 to 2017. The choice for the state is justified by the expression that it exerts within agribusiness and by the increase in the use of pesticides over time. As for the years, the 2006 and 2017 IBGE agricultural censuses were taken as a reference, which provide data that underlie all this work. About the methodology, it is a theoretical research that in addition to the bibliographic survey with insertions in Law, Economics, Sociology and even Biology, it had a jurisprudential research and also with research of collective norms. It was concluded that the current protection provided by Labor Law is not enough, because in addition to turning to the monetization of workers' health, having as main response to the use of pesticides the additional insalubrity, it also does not pay attention to the environmental issue. With this, horizons of meaning are opened for other interpretations of Labor Law, from an ecosocialist perspective, which, in addition to guaranteeing real protection for rural workers, turns to the environmental issue and can be used in a tactical way for the construction of a new form of socialization, free from the predatory greed of agribusiness.