Resolution urging aerial-spraying ban boosts Church-backed lobby

Published Date: November 6, 2009

A health department resolution urging a ban on aerial spraying of pesticides has boosted a Church campaign for a total ban on the method, commonly used in southern banana plantations.

Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo of Manila

The resolution is “important” because it gives credence to the complaints of farmers, said Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo of Manila, three days after the resolution was issued.

“Our aim is a total ban on aerial spraying” and “the president´s office has the authority to issue an executive order to do so,” said the bishop.

The Department of Health (DOH) executive committee signed a resolution on Nov. 3 urging the agriculture department to prohibit aerial spraying until it is proven to be safe.

Citing a study they conducted in 2006, DOH officials declared that “acute and chronic pesticide exposure can harm both people´s health and the environment.”

The agriculture department, they said, should consider making plans for a shift to organic farming techniques.

The Catholic Bishops´ Conference of the Philippines´ National Secretariat for Social Action Justice and Peace, which Bishop Pabillo heads, has been organizing street Masses and prayer rallies with seminarians, Religious, Catholic schools and others in support of Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial Spraying (citizens against aerial spraying).

The group includes banana plantation farmers from Davao City in the south, and surrounding provinces.

Up to 40,000 hectares of land in Davao del Norte province alone are planted with Cavendish bananas, mostly for export to Japan, China and the Middle East. At least 80,000 people are reportedly employed on banana plantations in the province.

Bishop Pabillo told UCA News, “We are happy the DOH stands by its own findings and has gone public about it.”

Environmental activist Father Robert Reyes
(extreme right) prays with farmers before a protest

“We also based our judgment on the findings of the DOH study which said spraying harms people.” He said he hopes the government will “stand by the DOH findings and do something to ban aerial spraying, because it affects a lot of people.”

Investors, meanwhile, must place people´s concerns ahead of business. “The industry will not collapse if aerial spraying stops… only investors´ profits may drop,” he said.

He cited plantations in Cotabato and Bukidnon provinces, also in the southern Philippines, that are thriving despite a local ban on aerial spraying. He said he is “willing to talk” to plantation owners.

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