| ||
|
Monday, September 23, 2013
CALL SENATE TO STOP MONSANTO - IMMUNITY FROM LEGAL ACTION - PROTECTION ACT!
WILLIE'S FAMILY FARM vs INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALLY DEPENDENT FARM MESSAGE
Published on Monday, September 23, 2013 by Common Dreams
It's Time to Stand Up With Family Farmers
John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger, Dave Matthews, and Neil Young perform at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for Farm Aid 2013 in Saratoga Springs, NY. (Photo: Paul Natkin/Photo Reserve, Inc.)Farm Aid's annual benefit concert, Farm Aid 2013, took place at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, NY on Saturday, September 21.
Every year, come harvest season, we gather for the annual Farm Aid concert. Artists, farmers, activists and eaters, we come together to recognize the crucial importance of family farmers. We take account of how far we've come and we renew our spirits for the fights ahead.
We stand with family farmers.
This strength is what's grown the Good Food Movement. Today, we're at our strongest. More people than ever are seeking out family farm food. Businesses sourcing from family farmers are searching for new farmers because demand exceeds supply. Entrepreneurs are making new connections between eaters and farmers. Community organizations and passionate volunteers are bringing good food to neighborhoods that need it most. Together, all of these people are building communities centered on a family farm economy. They're linking eaters with farmers, building relationships and nourishing bodies and souls. Their actions are transforming food and agriculture, from the ground up.
But even still, a handful of corporations dominate our food system.
There are good folks in Congress who are fighting for a family farm food system that benefits family farmers and all Americans. But they're blocked by a majority that lets corporate power, partisan politics and big money get in the way of progress. Their votes have reinforced a dominant, chemical-dependent food system that is harmful to our environment, our health and local economies, while cutting billions from nutrition and food programs for people who need food.
In recent years the Good Food Movement has forged ahead, including some progress made in the last farm bill. This movement has created more opportunities to support and promote family farm agriculture. But without meaningful action now on farm policy, those gains and more will be lost. Without better farm policies, family farmers will not have the chance to compete in a fair marketplace and earn a living. Conservation programs, so crucial in a changing climate, will be compromised. New and beginning farmers will lose access to the credit, resources and land they need to start their farm businesses. Programs for underserved farmers will disappear. Innovations happening right now on the farm to grow renewable energy will be lost. And industrial ag stands to win if efforts to reform wasteful farm subsidy programs are ignored.
Today, as the minutes tick down to another farm bill deadline, people in towns and cities everywhere are taking matters into their own hands. They're standing up with family farmers and insisting on food that is best for them and their families. They're seeking out food from family farms at farmers markets, grocery stores and restaurants. They are organizing to change the food served in schools, hospitals and public institutions. They're making their voice heard and voting for family farm food every way they can.
Our message is hard to miss. America needs family farmers. Congress, can you hear us?
© 2013 Willie Nelson
Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/23-0
Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/23-0
Friday, September 20, 2013
SERELINI CLAIMS FSA THROWS EATERS UNDER THE PLOW WITHOUT LONG TERM GMO FOOD TESTING
FSA 'endangering public health' by ignoring concerns over GM food
French researcher who claimed GM food caused cancers in rats says UK should review food safety and assess long-term toxicity
GM maize, like the one above, and other GM crops should be put through rigorous long-term testing, according to Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini. Photograph: Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images
The French researcher who caused a scientific storm when he claimed to show that some GM food led to tumours and cancers in rats has accused the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) of "recklessly endangering public health" by not demanding long-term testing of the foods.
In a series of parliamentary and public meetings held this week in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff, Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini has challenged UK politicians and safety authorities to review the way safety is assessed.
Séralini, a molecular biologist at Caen University, said: "Our research found severe toxicity from GM maize and [Monsanto pesticide] Roundup. The British Food Standards Agency has uncritically accepted the European Food Safety Authority's dismissal of the study, even though many of EFSA's experts have been exposed as having conflicts of interest with the GM industry. At the very least, the British government should demand long-term mandatory safety testing on all GM foods before they are released onto the market," he said.
"The British scientific authorities are deliberately misleading their government and are recklessly endangering public health in ignoring the findings of our research."
Séralini's study found that rats developed much higher levels of cancers and died earlier than controls when fed a diet of Monsanto's Roundup-tolerant GM maize NK603 for two years, or were exposed to Roundup over the same period. The usual industry tests last for 90 days.
The former member of two French government committees assessing the safety of GM foods suggested that the results could be explained by the endocrine-disrupting effects of the pesticide Roundup, and over-expression of the transgene in the genetically modified organism (GMO).
But although the €3.2m study was published in a peer-reviewed journaland claimed to be the most thorough long-term testing of GM food ever done, it attracted a torrent of criticism from the industry and some academics. It was refuted by several food standards agencies, including the UK's FSA as "biased, poorly performed, bogus, and substandard."
Monsanto, whose pesticide Roundup is engineered to be in most of the world's GM food crops, said it "did not meet minimum acceptable standards for this type of scientific research."
Séralini, in Britain for the first time since the paper was published, said he had been shocked by the "dishonesty" of many of his critics. "They reacted without checking anything. Mostly their quotes were stupid like 'GM has been used for years so it must be OK'. The fact that they were so violent suggested they had something to hide.
"I have been shocked at the conflicts of interests of so many scientists. There's much more than I thought. The problem is that there is a small group of scientists who attack you without checking the data for themselves. They do not demand the data from Monsanto."
But he said one year on his heavily criticised methodology is now being vindicated. A French government agency has called for tenders to repeat the experiment, and the EFSA has issued new guidelines to assess the risk of long-term toxicity from GM foods, which he said largely validate the way he conducted his experiments. EFSA has also accepted that no standardised protocol or guidelines exist.
However a spokesman for EFSA said: "EFSA's recent report has no implications on the authority's previous opinions related to the Séralini study and it should not seen as a validation of this study."
Séralini said: "I am not upset with GM, only the way it is controlled and assessed. It is bad for food. We are using the technology to make 'pesticide plants'. The way the technology is used is not neutral. I was in favour of GM. I am a molecular biologist. I believed it would reducepesticides but I saw it did the opposite."
The problem, he said, was not just the pesticide, in this case Roundup, which is widely known to be highly toxic, but the GM process itself. "This was a landmark finding, to show that the GM 'event' itself is a problem. The GM is designed to produce enzymes which indirectly destroy the protective compounds in the plant.
"I am sorry that the link between GM and pesticides is not made. The GM allows more pesticide to be contained in the plant. Nearly 80% of GMOs are designed to absorb Roundup. The other 20% are designed to produce their own pesticide. We found that pesticides are not really tested."
The issue may not be resolved until both Monsanto and Séralini publish the raw data from their studies. "We have put our data in the hands of a notary and will release it as soon as they release theirs. Monsanto wants to know what data we have. They do not want a comparisonof my data to theirs. They want to hide their data.
"I discovered that their [Monsanto] historical data is wrong. They say to me 'you haven't looked at the historical data.' But I believe their historical data is contaminated. I believe Monsanto and the regulatory authorities have systematically underestimated the side-effects [of GM food]. All the regulatory tests are falsified by contamination of the data."
He said he wants his data to be compared. "That is the only way to show what I have done is 10 times better than they have. My data is just raw data. Theirs is important for the release and consumption of [commercial] food."
An FSA spokeswoman said: "This paper was reviewed by EFSA – and by a number of other regulatory bodies around the world – all of whom agreed that the results did not support these conclusions. EFSA's assessment has been backed by many other bodies who have carried out detailed reviews of the study and of the significance of the results. This includes the national food safety authorities in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. Our own scientists at the FSA agree with the points raised in these reviews.
"In relation to the claimed link between GM maize and cancer, the study used a strain of rats that is particularly prone to tumours. It is therefore not surprising that tumours were seen both in the GM-fed animals and in the non-GM fed controls. However, the number of animals used in the study was too small to determine whether there were significant differences between the two groups."
Sunday, August 25, 2013
THE NEW PITCH ON "NEW" GOLDEN RICE
News Analysis
Golden Rice: Lifesaver?
By AMY HARMON
Published: August 24, 2013 67 Comments
ONE bright morning this month, 400 protesters smashed down the high
fences surrounding a field in the Bicol region of the Philippines and
uprooted the genetically modified rice plants growing inside.
Jes Aznar for The New York Times
Genetically engineered Golden Rice grown in a
facility in Los Baños, Laguna Province, in the Philippines.
Erik De Castro/Reuters
Mothers with masks made from baby bathtubs protested
Golden Rice in Quezon City, the Philippines, in June.
Had the plants survived long enough to flower, they would have betrayed a
distinctly yellow tint in the otherwise white part of the grain. That
is because the rice is endowed with a gene from corn and another from a
bacterium, making it the only variety in existence to produce beta
carotene, the source of vitamin A. Its developers call it “Golden Rice.”
The concerns voiced by the participants in the Aug. 8 act of vandalism
— that Golden Rice could pose unforeseen risks to human health and the
environment, that it would ultimately profit big agrochemical companies —
are a familiar refrain in the long-running controversy over the merits
of genetically engineered crops. They are driving the desire among some
Americans for mandatory “G.M.O.” labels on food with ingredients made
from crops whose DNA has been altered in a laboratory. And they have
motivated similar attacks on trials of other genetically modified crops
in recent years: grapes designed to fight off a deadly virus in France, wheat designed to have a lower glycemic index in Australia, sugar beets in Oregon designed to tolerate a herbicide, to name a few.
“We do not want our people, especially our children, to be used in these
experiments,” a farmer who was a leader of the protest told the
Philippine newspaper Remate.
But Golden Rice, which appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 2000
before it was quite ready for prime time, is unlike any of the
genetically engineered crops in wide use today, designed to either
withstand herbicides sold by Monsanto and other chemical companies or
resist insect attacks, with benefits for farmers but not directly for
consumers.
And a looming decision by the Philippine government about whether to
allow Golden Rice to be grown beyond its four remaining field trials has
added a new dimension to the debate over the technology’s merits.
Not owned by any company, Golden Rice is being developed by a nonprofit group called the International Rice Research Institute
with the aim of providing a new source of vitamin A to people both in
the Philippines, where most households get most of their calories from
rice, and eventually in many other places in a world where rice is eaten
every day by half the population. Lack of the vital nutrient causes
blindness in a quarter-million to a half-million children each year. It
affects millions of people in Asia and Africa and so weakens the immune
system that some two million die each year of diseases they would
otherwise survive.
The destruction of the field trial, and the reasons given for it,
touched a nerve among scientists around the world, spurring them to
counter assertions of the technology’s health and environmental risks.
On a petition supporting Golden Rice circulated among scientists and
signed by several thousand, many vented a simmering frustration with
activist organizations like Greenpeace, which they see as playing on
misplaced fears of genetic engineering in both the developing and the
developed worlds. Some took to other channels to convey to American
foodies and Filipino farmers alike the broad scientific consensus that G.M.O.’s are not intrinsically more risky than other crops and can be reliably tested.
At stake, they say, is not just the future of biofortified rice but also
a rational means to evaluate a technology whose potential to improve
nutrition in developing countries, and developed ones, may otherwise go
unrealized.
“There’s so much misinformation floating around about G.M.O.’s that is taken as fact by people,” said Michael D. Purugganan,
a professor of genomics and biology and the dean for science at New
York University, who sought to calm health-risk concerns in a primer
on GMA News Online, a media outlet in the Philippines: “The genes they
inserted to make the vitamin are not some weird manufactured material,”
he wrote, “but are also found in squash, carrots and melons.”
Mr. Purugganan, who studies plant evolution,
does not work on genetically engineered crops, and until recently had
not participated in the public debates over the risks and benefits of
G.M.O.’s. But having been raised in a middle-class family in Manila, he
felt compelled to weigh in on Golden Rice. “A lot of the criticism of
G.M.O.’s in the Western world suffers from a lack of understanding of
how really dire the situation is in developing countries,” he said.
Some proponents of G.M.O.’s say that more critical questions, like where
biotechnology should fall as a priority in the efforts to address the
root causes of hunger and malnutrition and how to prevent a few
companies from controlling it, would be easier to address were they not
lumped together with unfounded fears by those who oppose G.M.O.’s.
“It is long past time for scientists to stand up and shout, ‘No more lies — no more fear-mongering,’ ” said Nina V. Fedoroff,
a professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
in Saudi Arabia and a former science adviser to the American secretary
of state, who helped spearhead the petition. “We’re talking about saving millions of lives here.”
Precisely because of its seemingly high-minded purpose, Golden Rice has
drawn suspicion from biotechnology skeptics beyond the demonstrators who
forced their way into the field trial. Many countries ban the
cultivation of all genetically modified crops, and after the rice’s
media debut early in the last decade, Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmentalist, called it a “Trojan horse”
whose purpose was to gain public support for all manner of genetically
modified crops that would benefit multinational corporations at the
expense of poor farmers and consumers.
In a 2001 article, “The Great Yellow Hype,”
the author Michael Pollan, a critic of industrial agriculture,
suggested that it might have been developed to “win an argument rather
than solve a public-health problem.” He cited biotechnology industry
advertisements that featured the virtues of the rice, which at the time
had to be ingested in large quantities to deliver a meaningful dose of
vitamin A.
But the rice has since been retooled: a bowl now provides 60 percent of
the daily requirement of vitamin A for healthy children. And Gerard Barry,
the Golden Rice project leader at the International Rice Research
Institute — and, it must be said, a former senior scientist and
executive at Monsanto — suggests that attempts to discredit Golden Rice
discount the suffering it could alleviate if successful. He said, too,
that critics who suggest encouraging poor families to simply eat fruits
and vegetables that contain beta carotene disregard the expense and
logistical difficulties that would thwart such efforts.
Identified in the infancy of genetic engineering as having the potential for the biggest impact for the world’s poor, beta-carotene-producing rice was initially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the European Union. In a decade of work culminating in 1999, two academic scientists, Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer, finally switched on the production of beta carotene by adding daffodil and bacteria DNA to the rice’s genome. They licensed their patent rights to the agribusiness company that later became Syngenta, on the condition that the technology and any improvements to it would be made freely available to poor farmers in the developing world. With the company retaining the right to use it in developed countries, potentially as an alternative to vitamin supplements, Syngenta scientists later improved the amount of beta carotene produced by substituting a gene from corn for the one from daffodil.
If the rice gains the Philippine government’s approval, it will cost no
more than other rice for poor farmers, who will be free to save seeds
and replant them, Dr. Barry said. It has no known allergens or toxins,
and the new proteins produced by the rice have been shown to break down
quickly in simulated gastric fluid, as required by World Health
Organization guidelines. A mouse feeding study is under way in a
laboratory in the United States. The potential that the Golden Rice
would cross-pollinate with other varieties, sometimes called “genetic
contamination,” has been studied and found to be limited, because rice
is typically self-pollinated. And its production of beta carotene does
not appear to provide a competitive advantage — or disadvantage — that
could affect the survival of wild varieties with which it might mix.
If Golden Rice is a Trojan horse, it now has some company. The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, which is supporting the final testing of
Golden Rice, is also underwriting the development of crops tailored for
sub-Saharan Africa, like cassava that can resist the viruses that
routinely wipe out a third of the harvest, bananas that contain higher
levels of iron and corn that uses nitrogen more efficiently. Other
groups are developing a pest-resistant black-eyed pea and a “Golden
Banana” that would also deliver vitamin A.
Beyond the fear of corporate control of agriculture, perhaps the most
cited objection to G.M.O.’s is that they may hold risks that may not be
understood. The decision to grow or eat them relies, like many other
decisions, on a cost-benefit analysis.
How food consumers around the world weigh that calculation will probably
have far-reaching consequences. Such crops, Scientific American
declared in an editorial last week, will make it to people’s plates
“only with public support.”
Greenpeace, for one, dismisses the benefits of vitamin supplementation
through G.M.O.’s and has said it will continue to oppose all uses of
biotechnology in agriculture. As Daniel Ocampo, a campaigner for the
organization in the Philippines, put it, “We would rather err on the
side of caution.”
For others, the potential of crops like Golden Rice to alleviate
suffering is all that matters. “This technology can save lives,” one of
the petition’s signers, Javier Delgado of Mexico, wrote. “But false
fears can destroy it.”
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
WHAT'S IN YOUR (GMO) PORTFOLIO? MONSANTO PROFITS SOAR; CROPS & STREET CRED - FAIL
Big Food Stocks and Anti-GMO Sentiment: The Right to Choose Movement Gains Strength
By Minyanville, August 16, 2013, 04:10:00 PM EDT
In the face of mass demonstrations, documentaries like
GMO OMG
,
and a torrent of irate consumers who have inundated the blogosphere
with complaints and criticism of genetically modified organisms
(GMOs), food giants are responding with concessions.
Whole Foods Market, Inc.
(
WFM
) announced that by 2018, it will require the labeling of
genetically engineered ingredients in its American and Canadian
stores. In the UK, it's already mandatory. Whole Foods' competitors
are expected to follow suit.
Americans are showing clear support for the Right to Choose movement by buying more of the few products that are already labeled non-GMO. Whole Foods President, A. C. Gallo told the New York Times , "We've seen how our customers have responded to the products we do have labeled. Some of our manufacturers say they've seen a 15% increase in sales of products they have labeled non-GMO."
Despite all of the controversy surrounding the GMO issue, however, it has been business as usual during the past year or so for big food companies like Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ( WMT ) and Whole Foods, and biotech engineering companies like Monsanto Company ( MON ), where earnings and share prices have been relatively stable. Companies like Monsanto -- the dominant producer of most genetically modified corn, soybean, and cotton seeds -- see its revenues tied to extreme weather conditions that affect crop yields, not consumer sentiment. In fact, analysts predict a rise in corn seed pricing in fiscal 2014, which will likely lead to higher Monsanto revenues.
Yet when Monsanto slipped below its 200-day moving day average of $97.94 in late May, following the announcement of this fall's "March Against Monsanto," scheduled for October 12, 2013 in 250 cities and 36 countries, some analysts said that the drop was a result of the extreme negative sentiment. Others pointed to the fact that it was also a time when the market as a whole was weak. Either way, the stock never recovered and is currently trading at around $95.10 as of August 15. Some predict that momentum has weakened in the face of negative press, which continues to escalate. The company is also subject to a court ruling against it in Brazil where it stands accused of overcollecting royalties. Currently the decision is under appeal, but if it fails, the case could result in a $2 billion payout due for restitution.
Worldwide, Monsanto is under fire from critics who say that genetically modified organisms upset the natural environmental balance and can lead to serious health conditions. Anti-GMO activists point to animal studies that they say show organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility as a result of diets containing GMO foods. They also say that human studies seem to show that the human body is unable to process and rid itself of some genetically modified (GM) foods. However, the federal government and other supporters of GMOs maintain that scientific studies to date have been inconclusive. On the other hand, New York Times investigative reporter Michael Moss, author of Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us , says that in the US, the agency in charge of GMOs is "the FDA, which has a real spotty record on food safety." Genetically modified crops are already banned in many countries and shunned internationally by consumers who are unwilling to incur potential health risks and angered by possible environmental hazards.
Originally a chemical company that produced plastics and pesticides, Monsanto entered the biotech market in the 1980s. It began by developing genetic traits and licensing them to companies that handled the actual breeding of seeds and sales to farmers. By the mid-1990s, Monsanto shifted its strategy and began acquiring many of the independent seed businesses that had been its customers. Over the next decade, the company spent more than $12 billion buying at least 30 of these companies.
Currently, genetically modified crops are grown on 420 million acres by 17.3 million farmers worldwide. Monsanto maintains that its seeds improve agriculture by helping farmers to maximize farmland production while conserving resources such as water and energy. Advocates of GMO-free farming contend that other methods, like organic farming, are just as effective without damaging the environmental balance or posing dangers to human health.
The European Union is divided on the GMO issue. Eight member states -- France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Luxemburg, Austria, Hungary, and Greece -- have outlawed the cultivation of Monsanto's genetically modified maize (MON810). However, the ban was legally challenged recently in France, and a high court overturned the ruling on August 2. But then a few days later, President Francois Hollande vowed that France would continue its moratorium on the GM maize.
Hollande said that the ban on GM crops would continue "not because we refuse progress, but in the name of progress. We cannot accept that a product -- corn -- has bad consequences on other produce." He added that it would be necessary to "secure this decision legally, at a national level and especially at a European level."
One of the pioneers in the GMO conflagration, journalist and one-time high profile activist Mark Lymas, has changed his radically anti-GMO position. In an attention-getting reversal, he retracted many of his initial criticisms and came out as a full-fledged advocate of genetic crop modification. In January 2013, he told a farming audience in the UK, "The GM debate is over... You are more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM food. More to the point, people have died from choosing organic, but no one has died from eating GM." He said, "[T]he risk today is not that anyone will be harmed by GM food, but that millions will be harmed by not having enough food, because a vocal minority of people in rich countries want their meals to be what they consider natural."
So far, despite the flood of anti-GMO sentiment, Monsanto's fortunes seem relatively unaffected. Its financial strength is currently derived from a strong balance sheet with cash and cash equivalents of $2.9 billion. Since 2010, it has been rigorously taking steps to increase shareholder value. In June, it announced a $2 billion share repurchase program ending in 2016 and its fourth dividend hike in three years took effect, resulting in a cumulative increase of about 60%. The company also has strong political connections and many former employees in high places. Among them are Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (who worked for Monsanto in the '70s) and Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA (who worked for a law firm that represented Monsanto), along with several other notable figures.
Recently Monsanto joined with five other big crop biotechnology and agricultural chemical companies -- The Dow Chemical Company ( DOW ), DuPont ( DD ), Syngenta AG (SYT), Bayer CropScience LTD (BOM:506285), and BASF SE (OTCMKTS:BASFY) -- in a campaign to support better transparency. The campaign's focus is its new website, GMOAnswers.com, which responds to questions about genetically engineered crops. The site also includes crop safety data similar to that which is submitted to regulatory agencies.
"We have not done a very good job communicating about GMOs," said Cathleen Enright, executive director of the Council for Biotechnology Information, which runs the site. "We want to get into the conversation."
The coalition of big biotech seed companies sponsoring GMOAnswers.com will clearly use the site as a platform to counter negative consumer perception. However, in light of negative health findings regarding GMOs, it looks like escalating global negative sentiment will continue to hurt and could eventually doom the company. Yet there is still considerable institutional support; many five-star mutual funds currently hold Monsanto.
Americans are showing clear support for the Right to Choose movement by buying more of the few products that are already labeled non-GMO. Whole Foods President, A. C. Gallo told the New York Times , "We've seen how our customers have responded to the products we do have labeled. Some of our manufacturers say they've seen a 15% increase in sales of products they have labeled non-GMO."
Despite all of the controversy surrounding the GMO issue, however, it has been business as usual during the past year or so for big food companies like Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ( WMT ) and Whole Foods, and biotech engineering companies like Monsanto Company ( MON ), where earnings and share prices have been relatively stable. Companies like Monsanto -- the dominant producer of most genetically modified corn, soybean, and cotton seeds -- see its revenues tied to extreme weather conditions that affect crop yields, not consumer sentiment. In fact, analysts predict a rise in corn seed pricing in fiscal 2014, which will likely lead to higher Monsanto revenues.
Yet when Monsanto slipped below its 200-day moving day average of $97.94 in late May, following the announcement of this fall's "March Against Monsanto," scheduled for October 12, 2013 in 250 cities and 36 countries, some analysts said that the drop was a result of the extreme negative sentiment. Others pointed to the fact that it was also a time when the market as a whole was weak. Either way, the stock never recovered and is currently trading at around $95.10 as of August 15. Some predict that momentum has weakened in the face of negative press, which continues to escalate. The company is also subject to a court ruling against it in Brazil where it stands accused of overcollecting royalties. Currently the decision is under appeal, but if it fails, the case could result in a $2 billion payout due for restitution.
Worldwide, Monsanto is under fire from critics who say that genetically modified organisms upset the natural environmental balance and can lead to serious health conditions. Anti-GMO activists point to animal studies that they say show organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility as a result of diets containing GMO foods. They also say that human studies seem to show that the human body is unable to process and rid itself of some genetically modified (GM) foods. However, the federal government and other supporters of GMOs maintain that scientific studies to date have been inconclusive. On the other hand, New York Times investigative reporter Michael Moss, author of Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us , says that in the US, the agency in charge of GMOs is "the FDA, which has a real spotty record on food safety." Genetically modified crops are already banned in many countries and shunned internationally by consumers who are unwilling to incur potential health risks and angered by possible environmental hazards.
Originally a chemical company that produced plastics and pesticides, Monsanto entered the biotech market in the 1980s. It began by developing genetic traits and licensing them to companies that handled the actual breeding of seeds and sales to farmers. By the mid-1990s, Monsanto shifted its strategy and began acquiring many of the independent seed businesses that had been its customers. Over the next decade, the company spent more than $12 billion buying at least 30 of these companies.
Currently, genetically modified crops are grown on 420 million acres by 17.3 million farmers worldwide. Monsanto maintains that its seeds improve agriculture by helping farmers to maximize farmland production while conserving resources such as water and energy. Advocates of GMO-free farming contend that other methods, like organic farming, are just as effective without damaging the environmental balance or posing dangers to human health.
The European Union is divided on the GMO issue. Eight member states -- France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Luxemburg, Austria, Hungary, and Greece -- have outlawed the cultivation of Monsanto's genetically modified maize (MON810). However, the ban was legally challenged recently in France, and a high court overturned the ruling on August 2. But then a few days later, President Francois Hollande vowed that France would continue its moratorium on the GM maize.
Hollande said that the ban on GM crops would continue "not because we refuse progress, but in the name of progress. We cannot accept that a product -- corn -- has bad consequences on other produce." He added that it would be necessary to "secure this decision legally, at a national level and especially at a European level."
One of the pioneers in the GMO conflagration, journalist and one-time high profile activist Mark Lymas, has changed his radically anti-GMO position. In an attention-getting reversal, he retracted many of his initial criticisms and came out as a full-fledged advocate of genetic crop modification. In January 2013, he told a farming audience in the UK, "The GM debate is over... You are more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM food. More to the point, people have died from choosing organic, but no one has died from eating GM." He said, "[T]he risk today is not that anyone will be harmed by GM food, but that millions will be harmed by not having enough food, because a vocal minority of people in rich countries want their meals to be what they consider natural."
So far, despite the flood of anti-GMO sentiment, Monsanto's fortunes seem relatively unaffected. Its financial strength is currently derived from a strong balance sheet with cash and cash equivalents of $2.9 billion. Since 2010, it has been rigorously taking steps to increase shareholder value. In June, it announced a $2 billion share repurchase program ending in 2016 and its fourth dividend hike in three years took effect, resulting in a cumulative increase of about 60%. The company also has strong political connections and many former employees in high places. Among them are Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (who worked for Monsanto in the '70s) and Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA (who worked for a law firm that represented Monsanto), along with several other notable figures.
Recently Monsanto joined with five other big crop biotechnology and agricultural chemical companies -- The Dow Chemical Company ( DOW ), DuPont ( DD ), Syngenta AG (SYT), Bayer CropScience LTD (BOM:506285), and BASF SE (OTCMKTS:BASFY) -- in a campaign to support better transparency. The campaign's focus is its new website, GMOAnswers.com, which responds to questions about genetically engineered crops. The site also includes crop safety data similar to that which is submitted to regulatory agencies.
"We have not done a very good job communicating about GMOs," said Cathleen Enright, executive director of the Council for Biotechnology Information, which runs the site. "We want to get into the conversation."
The coalition of big biotech seed companies sponsoring GMOAnswers.com will clearly use the site as a platform to counter negative consumer perception. However, in light of negative health findings regarding GMOs, it looks like escalating global negative sentiment will continue to hurt and could eventually doom the company. Yet there is still considerable institutional support; many five-star mutual funds currently hold Monsanto.
Read more: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/big-food-stocks-and-antigmo-sentiment-the-right-to-choose-movement-gains-strength-cm268292#ixzz2cbu0uUF1
Friday, August 16, 2013
DOES A 1190% INCREASE IN AGRITOXINS ON GMO CROPS SOUND SUSTAINABLE TO YOU?
“The United Republic of Soybeans.” That’s the patronizing moniker given to the entire Southern Cone − comprising the countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia − by the Syngenta Corporation in a 2003 advertisement in the rural supplements of the Argentine papers Clarín and La Nación. It’s an open statement of the neocolonialist fervour with which these companies are attempting to dominate this region of the world.
In 2012, the agribusiness transnationals really stepped up their campaign to control these countries and their institutions. They launched new genetically engineered (transgenic or GE) crops involving increased health and environmental hazards because of the agrotoxins (pesticides and herbicides) that have to be applied with them. They also lobbied for policy changes that are without precedent except for the initial GE onslaught in the second half of the 1990s. This new corporate drive comes in a troubling new context in which almost all the governments of the region (at least until June of last year) were “progressive” critics of neoliberalism. These governments have begun to rectify some of the neoliberal policies adopted in the 1990s, with the government taking a more active role in regulating the economy and providing for social welfare, education, and healthcare.
However, in all this time, the prevailing model of agricultural production has not changed. There has been no official concern about the problems caused by the widespread planting of transgenic soybeans and the high levels of agrotoxins this requires. On the contrary, this model continues to be consolidated and defended by all of the region’s governments, which have adopted it as government policy in every case. At best – and only when societal pressure becomes too great – they have given slapdash consideration to the problems of agrotoxin poisoning, displacement of peasants and first peoples, land concentration, and loss of local production. But these are considered “collateral impacts.” (Bolivia is excluded from this assessment, since although the “half-moon” region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra sits within the territory dubbed the “United Republic of Soybeans,” the government of Evo Morales has taken widely divergent positions from the rest of the governments. This has led to conflict with Santa Cruz power brokers who have called for the region to separate from the country).
In previous issues of Against the grain (1 2 3), we have criticized the soy incursion as serving to consolidate the agribusiness model of production. The Southern Cone has become the region with the highest concentration of GE crops in the world and, in a closely related development, the region with the highest per capita application of agrotoxins. In this issue, we will explore the soy phenomenon and its implications for peasant communities and society as a whole.
The profound impacts of the agribusiness model know no borders between rural and urban. In rural areas and outer suburbs they are measured in terms of agrotoxin poisoning, displaced farmers (who swell the ranks of the urban poor), ruined regional economies, correspondingly high urban food prices, and contamination of the food supply. Ultimately, what we are looking at is a social and environmental catastrophe settling like a plague over the entire region. Wherever you live, you cannot ignore it.
The handful of people and companies responsible for this chain of destruction have names: Monsanto and a few other biotech corporations (Syngenta, Bayer) leading the pack; large landowners and planting pools that control millions of hectares (Los Grobo, CRESUD, El Tejar, Maggi, and others); and the cartels that move grain around the world (Cargill, ADM, and Bunge). Not to mention the governments of each of these countries and their enthusiastic support for this model. To these should be added the many auxiliary businesses providing services, machinery, spraying, and inputs that have enriched themselves as a result of the model.
To put some numbers on the phenomenon, there are currently over 46 million ha of GE soy monoculture in the region. These are sprayed with over 600 million litres of glyphosate and are causing deforestation at a rate of at least 500,000 ha per year.
Burning freshly-felled trees near Mariscal Estagarribia, in the Boqueron region of Paraguay. (Photo: Glyn Thomas / FoE)
While the regional impacts of this model tend to occur in
interconnected fashion, we will attempt to break them down for further
analysis. This analysis takes place against a backdrop of a coup d’état
in Paraguay, where the powers that be have shown their intentions most
abruptly and nakedly. But this coup was intended to set an example for
the entire region. The idea was to show them the “right path” and the
consequences of straying from it.Agribusiness and murder
This has been a constant in the region in recent years. As mentioned, Paraguay is where the most brutal impacts have been felt. Perhaps the worst incident was the Curuguaty massacre on 15 June 2012 when 11 peasants and six police officers died as a result of open conflict between peasants, paramilitaries, and the government. The massacre was the pretext for the institutional coup d’état that put an end to president Lugo’s administration.
Prior to the coup, and continuing afterward, a wave of repression against peasant leaders took place. This has morphed into selective assassinations that have taken the lives of Sixto Pérez (1 September 2012 in Puentesiño, Concepción Department), Vidal Vega (1 December 2012 in Curuguaty, Canindeyú Department), and Benjamín Lezcano within a space of eight months following the inauguration of new president Federico Franco.4 CONAMURI, the national rural and indigenous women’s confederation, has stated that the same modus operandi was used in the three cases and that the goal seems to have been the same in each: to decapitate the peasant leadership.5
In Argentina, three peasants have been murdered in Santiago del Estero in the last three years (Sandra Ely Juárez, Cristian Ferreyra, and Miguel Galván), all in connection with the soybean industry. Elsewhere, communities in the provinces of Formosa and Salta have been subjected to ongoing harassment.6 In Brazil too the peasant movement, and especially the Landless People’s Movement (MST), has been hit with agribusiness violence. Recently, the Comisión Pastoral de la Tierra (CPT) released a preliminary report on the violence in 2012 that tabulates 36 deaths due to agrarian conflict.7 Already this year, three MST leaders have been assassinated (Cícero Guedes dos Santos, Regina dos Santos Pinho, and Fabio dos Santos Silva).
Peasant
organisations affiliated with La Via Campesina Paraguay march at the
People's Summit at Rio+20 in June 2012. They were protesting the killing
of 11 peasants at Curuguaty a few days earlier. (Photo: GRAIN)This is all taking place as part of a broader drive to criminalize social movements. Not only are the movements persecuted and stigmatized informally, but they are also targeted by repressive laws. Argentina in December 2011 passed an antiterrorism law that joins a number of similar laws already existing in countries of the region.
Agribusiness and agrotoxin poisoning
One of the big lies told by the corporations, the media, and certain elements in academia to justify the introduction of GE seeds was that they would help reduce the use of agrotoxins. As many peoples’ organizations have repeatedly shown, the reality is exactly the opposite. Today, the rise in the use of agrotoxins is alarming, and their impacts on the entire region are increasingly difficult to hide.
None of this should surprise anyone who realizes that genetically engineered seeds are being promoted by the same corporations that sell agrotoxins, with Monsanto in the lead. In fact, herbicide-resistant crops are by far the most popular transgenic product on the market.
By 2008, Brazil had become the world’s largest per capita consumer of agrotoxins, accounting for 20% of all agrotoxins used on the planet. Per capita consumption was 5.2 litres of agrotoxins per year.8 9 The frightening figure of 853 million litres of agrotoxins used in 2011, with 190% growth in the Brazilian market in the last decade, speaks volumes. Of this total, 55% of agrotoxins are sprayed on soybeans and corn, with soy alone accounting for 40% of the total.10 Glyphosate accounts for about 40% of agrotoxin consumption in Brazil.
Argentina is keeping pace. In 2011 a total of 238 million litres of glyphosate were sprayed, for a whopping 1190% increase over 1996, the year herbicide-tolerant transgenic soy was introduced into the country.11
In Paraguay, the world’s sixth largest soybean producer, glyphosate use in 2007 amounted to over 13 million litres.12
In Uruguay, where transgenic soy is also making inroads, at least 12 million litres were used in 2010.13 Uruguay is in fact the country where, due to drinking water contamination in the city of Montevideo, the urban population is beginning to react with alarm.
Taking stock of the region, it can be surmised that at least 600 million litres of glyphosate are being sprayed every year. This frightening figure has translated into the filing of innumerable complaints by people who have seen their health, ecosystems, agriculture, and communities be degraded by these agrotoxins.
Glyphosate, widely promoted by Monsanto for its supposedly low toxicity, is now under much closer scrutiny: - The impact on communities is now impossible to hide. Thousands of people living in the “sprayed communities” are complaining of new health problems caused by pesticide applications, including birth defects, acute fatal poisonings, respiratory problems, neurological diseases, cancers, abortions, skin diseases, and others.
Petrona
Villasboa's 11-year-old son, Silvino Talavera, died after being sprayed
with pesticides while riding his bicycle along a road between two
fields of soya. He was just 80 metres from his home in Pirapey, Itapúa,
Paraguay (Photo: Glyn Thomas / FoE)- Independent scientific research confirms these grave findings. Studies linking glyphosate to tumours and deformities in embryos have been published in the most prestigious journals in recent years.
- The health effects of the so-called “inert” ingredients used in Roundup, most notoriously the surfactant polyoxyethylene amine (POEA), have also been demonstrated. POEA is associated with gastrointestinal and central nervous system disorders, respiratory problems, and depressed red blood cell counts.
- The environmental harms caused by glyphosate have also been amply confirmed by both research and experience. Glyphosate is unquestionably linked to destruction of biodiversity, as in the peer-reviewed studies showing its toxic effects on amphibians.
No doubt about it, agrotoxins are another piece of the murderous agribusiness picture.
Agribusiness and the imposition of genetic engineering
The introduction of new GE crops linked to the use of new agrotoxins is part of the corporations’ strategy and has been since 2012.
Argentine President Cristina Fernández’s announcement of new Monsanto investments in Argentina at the Council of the Americas meeting on 15 June 2012 gave notice of the official and corporate agenda to be rolled out in the following months, including a tidal wave of projects, announcements, and attempts to change national legislation.
In August 2012, Minister of Agriculture Norberto Yahuar stood next to Monsanto executives and announced the approval of the new “Intacta” rr2 soy, which combines glyphosate resistance with Bt production. Nothing new here, except to combine the only two crop traits the biotech industry has managed to put on the market in its twenty years of existence.
But other transgenics have been approved for field trials, including soy and corn resistant to more dangerous herbicides such as glufosinate and 2,4-D. Andrés Carrasco, a researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), stated the problem clearly a few months ago: “Five of those ten approved transgenic events [crop varieties] in Argentina, three of corn and two of soybeans, combine resistance to glyphosate with resistance to glufosinate ammonium [an inhibitor of synthesis of the amino acid glutamine]. The need to combine these two types of resistance in the new seeds shows up the inconsistencies in GE technology, in terms of both construction and behaviour over time. Yet instead of rethinking this approach, agribusiness keeps on trying to fix the problems with increasingly dangerous applications of the same GE technology.”15
In Paraguay, just months after the institutional coup d’état, the Ministry of Agriculture approved a transgenic maize variety that the deposed government had been resisting and the peasant organizations had been expressly rejecting, due to the threat it poses to the many local varieties of maize grown by indigenous and peasant farmers. In October 2012, four varieties of transgenic maize manufactured by Monsanto, Dow, Agrotec, and Syngenta were approved.16 By August, de facto president Franco had revealed his true constituency by issuing an executive order allowing Roundup Ready Bt cotton seeds to be imported.
In Brazil, the escalation began in late 2011 with the announcement by the National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio) of the first commercially grown GE bean variety “entirely developed in Brazil” and resistant to bean golden mosaic virus. This event, because it was developed by a public institution (Embrapa) and possesses different traits from the most widespread GE crops (Bt and rr), and because it concerns a staple food of lower-income people, became the poster child of “socially conscious” genetic engineering.17 However, this approval has been challenged by public officials, the scientific community, and civil society. Renato Maluf, President of the National Food and Nutritional Safety Council (Consea), invoked the precautionary principle in stating his concerns about the hasty release of this variety. “We think it showed a lack of precaution to release a product that the whole population will consume when we don’t have certainty about its food safety and nutritional value,” he said. Similarly, Ana Carolina Brolo, legal counsel to the humanitarian organization Tierra de Derechos, indicated that “this GE crop approval was characterized by a lack of respect for domestic and international biosafety rules”.18
As has always been the case, the new GE crops depend on the use of agrotoxins to a very large extent. Some, such as glyphosate, are already in widespread use while other more toxic ones – dicamba, glufosinate, 2,4-D – are now being introduced. In Brazil, the Small Farmers’ Movement (MPA), a Via Campesina member, revealed in April 2012 that 2,4-D-resistant soy and maize were slated for approval.19 These seeds are already being grown experimentally in Argentina.
Agribusiness and control over seeds
New seed laws are being steamrollered over Latin America. Argentina has been particularly targeted as a direct result of its agreement with Monsanto. The same day that the Minister of Agriculture announced the approval of “Intacta” soybeans, he sent a new seeds bill to Congress with instructions that it be passed before 2013.
The bill was never made public nor subjected to any in-depth debate. It was discussed behind closed doors in the Ministry of Agriculture by elements of Argentine agribusiness. Yet its content transcends the agriculture ministry and confirms what the official announcement intimated: the bill will subordinate domestic seed policy to the dictates of UPOV 20 and the transnationals.
The National Indigenous Peasant Movement (MNCI) presented a cogent criticism: “The bill does not protect knowledge or biodiversity. It promotes privatization and protects ownership over the collective heritage of our peoples, especially peasant communities and indigenous peoples. It opens the doors to more extensive expropriation and privatization of agricultural and wild biodiversity in Argentina. It criminalizes or greatly restricts practices in effect since the beginnings of agriculture; i.e., freely selecting, breeding, obtaining, saving, reproducing, and exchanging seeds from the previous harvest. It sets the stage for the continued introduction of new genetically engineered crops, and the expansion of existing ones, by granting ownership over varieties without requiring proof of quality but simply on the basis of the existence of a trait. And, it gives the seed companies the power to police compliance with the provisions of the bill”.21
Thanks to organizing by various sectors, the tabling of the bill in Congress has been postponed, but the threat of its passage still looms.
Quite clearly, control over seeds – the basic unit of agriculture – is one of the main goals of the corporations. In this way, they hope to gain control over the entire agrifood system and build an unshakable monopoly. It is equally clear that such control would directly impact all human beings, preventing them from exercising food sovereignty and condemning millions to hunger.
Agribusiness and forest destruction
Deforestation throughout the region has intensified dramatically. Measures designed to rein it in (such as the Forests Act in Argentina and various regulations adopted in Brazil) have failed to stop it. The main cause is the advance of the agricultural frontier (often pushing the ranching frontier ahead of it).
As in the past, Brazil leads the pack with a net 28 million hectares of lost forest in the decade from 2000 to 2010.22 Between August 2010 and July 2011, 641,800 hectares of Amazon forest were lost,23 a fact triumphantly celebrated by the national authorities.
In Argentina, the figures (from official and NGO sources) were as follows: between 2004 and 2012, the logging machines destroyed 2,501,912 hectares, an area 124 times that of the city of Buenos Aires. Put another way, Argentina is destroying 36 football fields worth of forest every hour. The last Ministry of the Environment report, covering 2006-2011, found that 1,779,360 hectares of native forest had been destroyed during this period.24
In Paraguay, the deforestation picture is perhaps the most serious. On the one hand, historical deforestation (1945–1997) for agriculture caused a loss of 76.3% of the original forest cover in the eastern region.25 On the other, current deforestation in the western region culminated in 2011 with a loss of 286,742 ha of forest, a 23% increase over the figure of 232,000 ha deforested during 2010.26
A global look at this tragedy gives a better idea of the dimensions of what is occurring. An FAO study published in 201127 found that the average annual worldwide net loss of forest between 1990 and 2005 was around 5 million ha − and 4 million of that is taking place in South America.
Here again, agribusiness is making a killing in the literal sense: it is killing the unique ecosystems of the region, and thereby the peoples who have cohabited with the forest for millennia.
Agribusiness and land consolidation
Land consolidation is another phenomenon that has characterized the introduction of GE soybeans throughout the Southern Cone. Land concentration was already a serious problem in these countries, but it has gotten much worse.
Paraguay, already among the Latin American countries with the most unequal land distribution, saw this situation escalate to the point where today, 2% of owners control 85% of the farmland. The regional situation is worse when one considers that the neighbouring countries – Brazil especially but also Argentina – are also experiencing land concentration for transgenic soybeans.
Let’s look at some figures for these countries:28
- In Paraguay, in 2005, 4% of the soybean growers occupied 60% of total area planted to this crop. - In Brazil, in 2006, 5% of the soybean growers occupied 59% of the total area planted to this crop.
- In Argentina, in 2010, over 50% of the soybean production was controlled by 3% of producers, who occupied farms over 5000 ha.
- In Uruguay, in 2010, 26% of producers controlled 85% of soybean land. That same year, 1% of growers controlled 35% of soybean land.
The soybean model has profoundly transformed the way in which land is
concentrated. Today, most land is not purchased but leased by the large
producers. These “producers” are not physically identifiable persons but
pools, financed for the most part by speculative investment groups.- In Paraguay, in 2005, 4% of the soybean growers occupied 60% of total area planted to this crop. - In Brazil, in 2006, 5% of the soybean growers occupied 59% of the total area planted to this crop.
Roadside shacks of people whose land has been taken over for soy fields in Alto Parana, Paraguay (Photo: Glyn Thomas/FoE)- In Argentina, in 2010, over 50% of the soybean production was controlled by 3% of producers, who occupied farms over 5000 ha.
- In Uruguay, in 2010, 26% of producers controlled 85% of soybean land. That same year, 1% of growers controlled 35% of soybean land.
The consequences for local, peasant, and indigenous communities are always the same: expulsion from their land, in many cases with physical violence, as discussed above.
Figures on land expulsion are hard to come by, since there are no official statistics for any country of the region. However, researchers have found that in Paraguay, the agribusiness soybean steamroller, in its push to control 4 million ha of land, has displaced 143,000 peasant families. That’s more than half the farms under 20 ha recorded in the agricultural census of 1991.29 For Argentina, this model has provoked an unprecedented rural exodus which, by 2007, had expelled more than 200,000 farmers and their families from the land (26). In Brazil, starting in the 1970s, soy production displaced 2.5 million people in the state of Paraná and 300,000 in the state of Río Grande do Sul.30
Agribusiness: meet the new dictator
The institutional coup d’état in Paraguay shows how agribusiness – basically transnational corporations in cahoots with large landowners – is unwilling to be held back by whatever timid restrictions the national governments may try to impose.
In Paraguay, the Lugo government, though it had a parliamentary minority, was trying to set some limits on some of the worst aspects of industrial agriculture. Initiatives carried out by the ministries of health and environment and by the National Phytosanitary and Seed Service (Senave) sought to rein in the use of agrotoxins and the approval of new transgenics, especially Roundup-Ready maize and Bt cotton. The government also initiated dialogue with peasant organizations to try to put a stop to the long-running violence in the countryside as a result of land concentration.
The powerful agribusiness sector grouped under the UGP, with the support of Monsanto, Cargill, and other transnationals declared war on the authorities responsible for these initiatives, publicly calling for their ouster. The Curuguaty massacre was the excuse they found to overthrow President Lugo with the help of their allies in Congress. A two-hour session was all it took to bring in a new government favourable to their interests.
It was not just a change of president: with Lugo went all the public officials responsible for these positive initiatives. In short order they were replaced by agribusiness-friendly officials and measures. The proposed restrictions on spraying, new transgenics, and Seeds Act amendments vanished.
With the recent election of Horacio Cartés, the Colorado Party is back in power. Impunity for the coup plotters and free rein for agribusiness are the order of the day.
In the other countries of the region the situation is different. While the crude reality of Paraguay is not in evidence, it is also clear that agribusiness is making headway with its preferred policies and interfering with attempts to derail them.
The upshot is plain for all to see: democracy is incompatible with corporate control. We must demolish the structures allowing for agribusiness to take control over our resources if we wish to live in a democracy where the common good is preserved.
Agribusiness control over research
Universities and research institutes throughout the region, with a few honourable exceptions, have been colonized by the power and money of the agribusiness corporations. These corporations are using the research facilities as a mechanism through which to introduce genetically engineered crops and industrialized production models.
In 2012, it became public knowledge that Monsanto and the National Agricultural Research Institute of Uruguay (INIA) had signed an agreement to include company-owned transgenes in local soy germ plasm handled by the Institute.31 This agreement was publicly challenged by the National Rural Development Commission (CNFR), which represents family farmers on the INIA Board of Directors. It also came under fire from a number of civil society organizations, including REDES-Amigos de la Tierra. The agreement, whose text has not been made public, became the subject of an access to information request by elected members of the Frente Amplio (FA).
After the coup in Paraguay, the new minister of agriculture, Enzo Cardozo, announced that Paraguay would be producing its own GE seeds and making them available to all farmers. The seeds would be bred by the Paraguay Institute of Agricultural Technology (IPTA), which would receive a “technology transfer” from Monsanto upon payment of an amount to be agreed upon by de facto president Federico Franco.32
But Monsanto has already been operating under “cooperation” agreements for many years with public institutions in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil. It uses the research institutions as cheap scientific labour and as an agricultural extension channel for getting its seeds to farmers. Likewise, many public officials act as the ideological arm of the corporations. A paradigmatic case is that of Argentine science and technology minister Lino Barañao, who loses no opportunity to lobby on behalf of genetically modified agribusiness.
Agribusiness: another type of mining
Industrial agriculture is like mining in that it considers soils to be an inert substrate from which nutrients (proteins and minerals) can be extracted with the addition of technology and chemicals. It has no use for soils as living organisms nor does it ever restore the nutrients extracted.
The soil mining aspects of agriculture are expressed most brutally in genetically engineered soybean cropping. All the propaganda about “no-till” agriculture cannot hide the crude reality that soybeans do not even remotely return to the soil all the nutrients that they extract, nor can no-till methods sustain the soil’s structure and water retention capacity.
In previous reports we have discussed how Argentine soils are being degraded, with millions of tons of nutrients and billions of litres of water being taken away.33
Here are a few figures for Argentina alone (the numbers are not available for the other countries):
Soybean monoculture without crop rotation causes intense soil degradation, with a loss of 19 to 30 tons of soil depending on management techniques, slope, and weather.
Soybean growing in 2006/2007 (which yielded 47,380,222 tons) involved a net extraction of:
- 1 148 970.39 tons of nitrogen;
- 255 853.20 tons of phosphorus;
- 795 987.73 tons of potassium;
- 123 188.58 tons of calcium;
- 132 664.62 tons of sulphur, and
- 331.66 tons of boron.
Each exported annual soybean harvest also removes 42.5 billion cubic metres of water (data from 2004/2005 season).
Agribusiness and its corporate media partnersSoybean monoculture without crop rotation causes intense soil degradation, with a loss of 19 to 30 tons of soil depending on management techniques, slope, and weather.
Soybean growing in 2006/2007 (which yielded 47,380,222 tons) involved a net extraction of:
- 1 148 970.39 tons of nitrogen;
- 255 853.20 tons of phosphorus;
- 795 987.73 tons of potassium;
- 123 188.58 tons of calcium;
- 132 664.62 tons of sulphur, and
- 331.66 tons of boron.
Each exported annual soybean harvest also removes 42.5 billion cubic metres of water (data from 2004/2005 season).
The agribusiness colonization of the region can count on a powerful ally to back it up: the corporate media. The media act as the unconditional communication arm of agribusiness (in return for payment of millions of dollars to buy advertising that fills newspaper pages and radio and television hours).
This agribusiness-media collaboration is designed to convey the following messages:
- The myth that agribusiness is the panacea for world food production problems. The ideas of “progress,” “development,” and societal well-being are deliberately being confused with agribusiness interests.
- The myth that agribusiness is somehow involved with “sustainable development.” Media propaganda turns any agribusiness initiative into a generous act of “sustainable development” by ignoring its real effects.
- The myth that there are no downsides to agribusiness. All discussion or information about societal resistance, scientific or economic debate, or impact on communities and the environment is excluded from corporate media reports.
- The image of social movements as subversive, violent, antisocial, or “stuck in the past.” In this way, these movements are stigmatized and in some cases even criminalized.
Paraguay is perhaps the country where this alliance is most obvious. The UGP is linked to the Zuccolillo Group, owner of the powerful daily ABC Color. This was one of the papers calling most stridently for President Lugo’s ouster. In addition, Zuccolillo is president of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).34
Agribusiness and climate change
The links between industrial agriculture and the global climate crisis have been amply demonstrated. The figures are alarming: at a minimum, between 44 and 57% of greenhouse gases are due to the agroindustrial chain of production.
It is obvious that a region where industrial agriculture has become so dominant has got to be a major contributor to this global crisis. But it is also clear throughout the region that the conjunction of global problems with local ones such as deforestation is causing severe impacts. Rural areas are experiencing prolonged cycles of drought and flooding. Cities lack the infrastructure to deal with these unprecedented rainfall patterns. The main victims are the urban poor, a large percentage of whom are former peasants from plundered communities.
While there is still a great degree of fragmentation among social movements, it can also be said that they are all attempting to adopt a comprehensive analysis and avoid piecemeal struggle. They all understand that food sovereignty, autonomy, and protection of the common good must be the central themes of any campaign against agribusiness.
It is our hope that this edition of Against the grain will plant new seeds of struggle in the Southern Cone, and that they will grow into a powerful movement.
1 “¿Las corporaciones del agronegocio gobiernan en América Latina?, GRAIN, 25 June 2007
2 “Monsanto moves to tighten its control over Latin America,” Revista Biodiversidad, 5 June 2007
3 “Monsanto’s royalty grab in Argentina,” GRAIN, 8 October, 2004
4 “El asesinato selectivo de líderes campesinos, una práctica más frecuente”, BASE-IS, 15 March 2013
5 “Plan de exterminio”, Reportaje a Magui Balbuena de CONAMURI por Radio Mundo Real, 23 February 2013
6 “El árbol y el bosque”, Biodiversidadla, 10 April 2013
7 “Un militante del MST es asesinado”, MARCHA, 3 April 2013
8 “A luta constante contra os agrotoxicos”, Brasil de Fato, 11 January 2013
9 “Especial sobre agrotoxicos”, Brasil de Fato, June 2012
10 “Agrotóxicos, segurança alimentar e nutricional e saúde”, Associação Brasileira de Saúde Coletiva, 2012
11 “Producción de soya en el Cono Sur de las Américas”, GENOK, 31 July 2012
12 “Alimento sano, pueblo soberano”, CONAMURI, November 2011
15 Un nuevo veneno, el glufosinato, lettro de Andrés Carrasco, Biodiversidadla, 31 August 2012
16 Aprobado el uso de 4 tipos de semillas transgénicas de maiz, Paraguay.com, 25 October 2012
17 “Aprueban la producción y comercialización del primer transgénico brasileño”, Agro Noticias FAO, 16 September 2011
18 “Fríjol transgénico desata polémica alimentaria”, IPS, 30 September 2011
19 “Brasil: MPA denuncia próxima aprobación de transgénicos resistentes al 2,4-D”, Vía Campesina , 24 April 2012
20
UPOV - the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants – is an organisation that promotes legislation protecting patents
on plant genes and plant breeders' rights, to the detriment of
indigenous and peasant farmers ownership, use and exchange of seeds.
21 “¡NO a la privatización de las semillas en Argentina!”, MNCI - CLOC-VC Argentina - GRAIN - AT - ACBIO, 2 October 2012
22 “A brief overview of deforestation in tropical forests”, WRM Bulletin No 188, March 2013 3 April 2013
23 “Deforestación en Amazonia cayó a mínimo histórico”, Hoy, 5 June 2013
24“El árbol y el bosque”, Mu 63, 15 March 2013
25 “Paraguay: cómo se pierde el 90% de los bosques de un país, Vanessa Sánchez, Soitu.es, 11 August 2008
26 “Continúa sin pausa la deforestación en el Chaco paraguayo”, EA , 20 February 2012
27 “Satellite technology yields new forest loss estimates”, FAO, 30 November 2011
29 “Los refugiados modelo agroexportador”, Javiera Rulli, Repúblicas Unidas de la Soja, GRR, 2007
30 “Una reflexión sobre la reciente expansión del cultivo de la soja en América Latina”, Segrelles Serrano, José Antonio, Grupo Interdisciplinario de Estudios Críticos y de América Latina, 25 June 2007
31 “Alimentando las estrategias corporativas”, REDES-AT, 31 August 2012
32 “La espada de Monsanto sobre América Latina”, Marcha, 4 October 2012
33 “Extractivismo y agricultura industrial o como convertir suelos fértiles en territorios mineros”, GRAIN, Revista Biodiversidad, sustento y culturas N° 75, January 2012
Source: http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4749-the-united-republic-of-soybeans-take-two
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)