Spraying crops with pesticides is becoming increasingly expensive, and Greek farmers have found an alternative – liquids in unmarked plastic bottles that are smuggled in, writes “Reuters”.
Farmers in the Thessaly region say these chemicals are much more effective. But they are also potentially much more harmful. Laboratory tests obtained by “Reuters” show that the bottles contain pesticides that have been banned in Europe for several years.
The Greek Plant Protection Service (ESYF) indicates that in some regions of Greece as much as a quarter of pesticides are illegal. Not only Greece, but also other major agricultural producing countries indicate that
The problem could be even bigger than statistics show.
A European Commission spokesman told “Reuters” that this is a long-standing problem. Each member state has to fight pesticide smuggling on its own, but the EC is also working to approve new pesticides.
Greek farmers are particularly hard hit by the illegal pesticide trade, where the effects of a decade-long financial crisis are still being felt; climate change is not helping either. Some farmers say pesticides can account for up to half their annual costs. A litre of a popular insecticide in Greece costs as much as 380 euros, with counterfeits available on the black market for almost half that price.
The high prices are threatening the way of life in Thessaly. The region is Greece’s breadbasket, growing grains, apples, almonds and cotton. Orchards are falling into disrepair as farmers seek work elsewhere. Giorgos Zeikos, the head of a cooperative in the small village of Agia and a fourth-generation apple grower, asked whether farmers had to become criminals to survive. Zeikos himself has refused to use the illegal pesticides offered to him, but he knows farmers in nearby villages who use them.
The effectiveness of illegal pesticides also seems tempting. Farmers in the village of Metamorfosi remember that
the older, now banned pesticides were so powerful that even birds wouldn’t fly over their cotton fields after spraying.
Now they are using double the permitted dose of the pesticide. The ESYF president dismissed farmers’ complaints that the pesticides are expensive and ineffective. He said the authorities are simply not doing enough to punish violators, and that those who deliberately poison food should be treated as criminals.
Farmers and officials said that the illegal substances are being brought in in car tires from Bulgaria and on rubber rafts from Turkey. In one village, an almond farmer admitted that he once traveled to Bulgaria to buy five boxes of counterfeit products for himself and his neighbors. Farmers pay in cash, spray at night and burn pesticide containers to eliminate evidence.
Bulgaria’s Food Safety Agency said it had increased inspections in October 2024 to combat the trade and use of unauthorized substances. Turkey’s Trade Ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
The seized and confiscated pesticides are being sent to the Benaki Institute of Phytopathology in Athens for analysis. Many have labels in Bulgarian and Turkish, while others are simply handwritten. Some counterfeit products look like EU-approved products but can contain particularly harmful substances, including solvents of unknown origin.
Greek law states that only products with labels in Greek are legal.
Greek police and Europol said many of the substances originated in China. China’s Foreign Ministry said it always encourages companies to comply with local laws and that Beijing wants to strengthen cooperation with the EU on customs controls.
Most of the EU restrictions were imposed because of concerns about increased health risks. Some substances are permitted outside the EU and are used, for example, in the US. More than a dozen banned pesticides were found in Greece in 2024, some of which have not been permitted since 2009. Last year, traces of banned pesticides were found in olives, cherries, tomatoes, grapes and oranges. While the World Health Organization says the risk to consumers is minimal, the same cannot be said for farmers who work with the substances. Doctors in Thessaly have said there has been a significant increase in the number of farmers suffering from respiratory problems. Meanwhile, farmers shrug and say that all pesticides have consequences.
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