60 years after Silent Spring, Latin America has not yet reduced the use of insecticides

Sixty years ago, Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, changing forever the perception of the effects of pesticides on the environment and human health. Despite the changes it caused and the DDT banning, nowadays these are still widely used by the main farmers worldwide. In this work, we wanted to study the situation in Latin America regarding pesticide use, focusing on insecticides because of the huge repercussion that these products have on the entomological diversity loss. Results showed that agricultural insecticide use has increased in most Latin American countries since 1990, especially noticeable in Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico. Paradoxically, Brazil is the country with the highest number of banned insecticide's active components in all the region, whilst Bolivia and Guatemala barely have a few products qualified as non-consent to import. Even though organic agriculture is an alternative that is gaining ground in Latin America, especially in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, it has been mainly allocated to exportation, and organic production has come to a standstill in recent years. Structuring more solid policies that might allow agriculture to progress in Latin America without risking entomological diversity and human health is necessary.