Brazilian Court Suspends New Glyphosate Registrations, Citing Government’s Missed Deadline

The 7th Labor Court of Brasília has ordered a 90-day temporary suspension on all new registrations and authorizations for glyphosate-based herbicides in Brazil, injecting fresh uncertainty into the country’s powerful agribusiness sector. The preliminary injunction, issued by Judge Gustavo Carvalho Chehab on September 4th, 2026, stops new products from entering the market, but explicitly denied a request to ban the use of the chemical outright or cancel existing product licenses.

The decision came in response to a civil public action that found the Brazilian government had failed to meet a mandatory legal deadline for the toxicological re-analysis of the substance. Judge Chehab noted that the re-evaluation, required under the new Pesticides Law (Law No. 14,785/2023), had expired without the Federal Government submitting the required technical analyses or justifying the delay. The court framed the move as the "least burdensome measure," designed to prevent new products from being authorized while the substance’s safety review remains incomplete.

Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used herbicide and forms a critical cornerstone of the no-till farming systems that drive Brazil’s enormous agricultural output, particularly for export commodities like soybeans, corn, and cotton. The ruling partially rejected a request from the Labor Public Prosecutor's Office, which had sought a total and immediate prohibition on the chemical. The Labor Public Prosecutor’s Office argued that the regulatory body, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa), has been too slow in re-evaluating older pesticides while accelerating approvals for new ones.

Brazil's pesticide regulation is overseen by a tripartite system: the Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA), Anvisa (health/toxicological), and the environmental agency Ibama. The court has ordered Ibama to produce a detailed report on the environmental and market impacts of a possible full withdrawal of the active ingredient from the market. This order highlights the significant risk a full ban would pose to one of the world's largest agricultural economies.

The 90-day pause signals that Brazil’s judiciary is now actively enforcing the regulatory timelines set by the new Pesticides Law, which aims to modernize and expedite the country’s traditionally slow and complex registration process. The temporary suspension is a clear reaction to regulatory inaction, forcing a pause on new approvals until the mandated scientific review is completed. The focus now shifts to the government agencies to complete the re-analysis and to Ibama to produce its report, determining the next step in the country's ongoing debate over agrochemical safety and agricultural productivity.

What it touches

The decision introduces direct regulatory risk for the agricultural sector and companies involved in crop inputs and commodity production. While existing business operations are unaffected, the uncertainty surrounding new product registrations affects the competitive landscape for agrochemical suppliers. Brazilian-exposed commodity producers, such as JBS and Adecoagro S.A., rely heavily on inputs like glyphosate to maintain high crop yields for their operations. Adecoagro S.A. (AGRO) closed down 1.04% at $12.33, while JBS N.V. (JBS) gained 0.32% to $12.62, illustrating the initial lack of a unified market reaction to the longer-term regulatory threat.