Modern Horticulture: an unsustainable dependent chemycal system. La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina case

Abstract

La Plata’s horticulture goes through a “modernization” process which increased productivity
and “quality” of products. This process required a high use of pesticides, many of them of high
toxicity. The aim of this work was to characterize and quantify pesticides use in the main horticultural
crops under different productive models, to analyze their use and to create aggressiveness
potential index related to the different productive systems. The amount of active substances
used by ha-1 and the aggressiveness index of each crop were calculated. The number
of active ingredient varied from 2 and more than 60, according to the crop. The toxicity levels
of the agrochemicals used in greenhouse production (mainly tomato and pepper) were found to
be more dangerous than open field production. In all crops more than 40% of the farmers use
agrochemical of extreme or high toxicity. This great use of high toxicity agrochemicals points
to the unsustainability of this horticultural model.