A protection strip is the distance that must be left between the place where a phytosanitary product is applied and something that you want to protect: the urban plant of a town, a school, a watercourse. It is the legal restriction that most determines what can be done with a property boundary to a locality, and the one that changes the most from one place to another.
Three levels, and the one in charge is usually the last one
The regulation is stacked on three levels. The Nation registers products and regulates empty containers - Law 27,279 - but does not set distances. Each province dictates its phytosanitary law, which establishes a framework and almost always enables municipalities to regulate their own territory. And the municipality dictates the ordinance, which in practice defines the number that must be met.
Order matters: municipal ordinance can be more demanding than provincial law, and usually is. A property may be enabled by the province and prohibited by the municipality in the same square meter.
Exclusion zone and buffer zone
Many standards use two concentric stripes instead of a single distance. The exclusion zone is the closest to the town and nothing applies there, in any form. The buffer zone comes later and allows application with restrictions: normally only products of the least dangerous toxicological classes, and sometimes only by land.
The provincial framework
| Province | Rule | Aerial, from the urban limit | Terrestrial, from the urban limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buenos Aires | Law 10,699 (1988), Dec. 499/91 | 2,000 m | No provincial distance |
| Santa Fe | Law 11,273 (1995), Dec. 552/97 | 3,000 m class Ia/Ib · 500 m class III/IV | 500 m class Ia/Ib · without class III/IV restriction |
| Córdoba | Law 9,164 (2004), Dec. 132/05 | 500 m class III/IV | 500 m class III/IV |
| Entre Ríos | Law 6,599 (1980), Dec. 279/03 | 3,000 m | 3,000 m |
| La Pampa | Law 1,173 (1989), Dec. 618/90 | 1,000 m | 500m |
The table shows why there is no single number. Buenos Aires does not set a land distance at the provincial level and Entre Ríos requires three kilometers for both modalities. Santa Fe and Córdoba distinguish by toxicological class: the same property has a different distance depending on what is applied.
And it also moves
The distances change through judicial means, not only through legislative means. Tandil ordinance 17.404/21 regulated aerial application near water courses; The Supreme Court of the Province of Buenos Aires suspended that article, and while it is resolved the previous provincial norm applies. It is one example among several: the jurisprudence on fumigation near rural schools and urban areas modified distances in more than one province.
That is why no table—this one included—serves as a final answer. It helps you know what to ask and to whom.
What does the report of this site measure?
The report of a property reports three distances, measured from the edge of the polygon and not from its center: to the nearest urban plant, to the nearest educational establishment, and to the nearest watercourse. They come from the layers of the National Geographic Institute, which publishes the urban plant layer with that exact name—the same term used by provincial laws.
- It is measured from edge to edge. A property of 500 hectares may have a town 200 meters from a corner and four kilometers from its center; the norm measures from the limit of paddock.
- Zero means that the property overlaps the reference, not that it is attached to it.
- The educational establishments are all those in the country, urban included: the closest school to a property boundary to a town is usually within the town.
- Only perennial watercourses. Turn signals are not included in this layer, and various standards treat them differently.
- The IGN data has a date. A town grows before the polygon is redrawn, so the distance can be generous.