Please Support this Letter

Dear friends,

During 2003 and 2004 multinational grain companies specialising in the export of genetically engineered and conventional soy bean and its by-products have developed strategies to co-opt environmental groups and small producers´ organisations in South America. This strategy has been used in order to achieve their objective of producing the amount of soy that, according to their own predictions, the world market will need over the coming years. In Argentina, the projected increase in cultivation for export to 100 million tons will mean an expansion of another 10 million hectares of soy monoculture. The effects of this will include deforestation, contamination of water resources, the expulsion of small farmers and devastating impacts on ecosystems.

This March, The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is organising an international meeting in Foz de Iguazu (Brazil) where they are proposing to launch a project called �Sustainable Soy�. The organising committee of this meeting, called the �Round Table on Sustainable Soy', are corporations such as Unilever, the soy company Amaggi , which is owned by the governor of Mato Grosso, the Swiss supermarket chain COOP, the Dutch development agency CORDAID and Fetraf-Sul/CUT , the Federation of Small Farmers from southern Brazil. The support of some civil society groups will allow this project, and through it, the corporations involved in the production and trade of soy to achieve their objectives and legitimise them at the same time.

To expose the strategy of the multinationals and to discuss real sustainable alternatives, the GRR, Rural Reflection Group (Grupo Reflexion Rural), with the support of MOCASE ( the Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero) are calling for a counter conference to be held in Puerto Iguazu on the same date.

We invite you to pledge your support by adding your signature to the attached statement for this initiative and email it to [email protected] . For further information on this issue please visit our website www.grr.org.ar .

GRR, December 2004

EUROPE´S RENEWED CONQUEST OF AMERICA - THIS TIME WITH LOCAL SUPPORT

In this document we, the Argentina-based Grupo de Reflexión Rural (GRR), express our opposition to proposals to implement a "Sustainable Soya" model, developed by a recent partnership of NGOs, cereal and Biotechnology companies in Argentina and Europe.

Monocultures of genetically modified soya inevitably lead to rural depopulation, increased deforestation and desertification, and consequently impoverishment of rural populations. Companies and institutions such as the Ministry of Agricultural (SAGPYA) herewith the National Institute of Technology in Agriculture in Argentina (INTA), and SENASA and the National Research Institute CONICET, are joining forces to develop a national biotechnology project that will, in our view, create an increased dependence on multinational corporations and an entrenchment of the neoliberal economic model, currently imposed on the country.

In this important historical juncture, the agrobusinesses propose to increase the production of exportable grain from sixty to one hundred million tons per annum, an expansion that will probably require ten or more million hectares of GMOs and other commodities, in addition to the 15 million hectares cultivated this year. To achieve this objective, and to avoid an ecological catastrophe and social upheavals, the government and companies require the help of NGOs. Hence the initiative started in Argentina under the mandate of the WWF, via its Argentinean agency Fundacion Vida Silvestre together with FARN, Greenpeace, the Faculty of Agronomy of the University of Buenos Aires and several companies, which has been named Sustainable Soya .

In this coalition, the institutions pursue their individual interests, such as trying to protect wildlife, preventing deforestation, or making a profit. However all of these are perceived within a framework, in which Argentina is a producer of GM commodities for a globalised market. Certain environmental organisations will search to establish sanctuaries within the national parks and exploit the remaining native forests, while acting as guides and experts helping to prevent the collapse of the ecosystems. The scientific and technical institutions are naively pursuing a national biotechnology project, neglecting that even the most minute laboratory procedures are protected by patents, and placing the few remaining resources of the State at the service of multinational interests.

Certain sectors of the grain producers (translators note: mainly smaller farmers) are trying to get their share, arguing about land tenure, believing that they are immune from paying royalties for their seeds, and drumming up support for so-called agrarian reform, while in reality fully complying with the soya model. Many of the urban union leaders, ignorant of the true nature of GM monoculture, continue to press for a fairer distribution of the gains, arguing that this would benefit consumers. At the same time, they denounce corrupt practices, such as the under-declaration of grain exports, implying that better custom controls and taxation could generate sufficient funds for solving acute social problems.

In the mean time the Rotary Club and CARITAS continue with their plans to install "soya milk" machines (called "mechanical cows" in Argentina) for use in hospitals and areas of extreme poverty, whilst incorporating soya-based foods in soup kitchens. In this way, they legitimise the monoculture of genetically modified soya model among the poor, whilst establishing a double standard in nutrition, in which the poor are fed on GM products. These actors contribute, in one way or another, to the perpetuation of the GM monoculture system.

All are responsible, through their actions or omissions, and are colluding with the multi­nationals that dominate our export market and have converted us to a soya republic� We need to recover our national dignity and denounce this Soya model, and our country's imposed role as commodity producer and biotechnology laboratory. We need to reconstruct the State by taking charge of foreign trade and reorganise the Junta Nacional de Granos (translator's note: an organisation for the storage and distribution of seeds at national level) that would maintain fair prices for foods destined for the tables of Argentineans. We need to return to the production of seeds, to recover our genetic patrimony, and create the foundations for a different agrarian model, with food sovereignty and local development as national objectives.

We absolutely reject the document issued in September by the WWF, Gland, Switzerland, with the title Managing the soya boom: Two scenarios of soy production expansion in South America , in which they propose a so-called Sustainable Soya model. We reject it because it displays an attitude of resignation and acceptance of the globalise soya model. According to this model, all stages of production and trade are managed by the agrobusiness, namely the production and sale of seeds, the distribution of pesticides; planting of the crop, collection and fumigation, even the control of the export ports. While, for Europe, the use of imported soya for forage means the loss of nutritional quality and the deterioration of rural life, for the countries of South America, it represents a grave threat of desertification of the soils, collapse of agrarian ecosystems and hunger for our people.

We reject it because it ignores the social problems of soya, a fodder that has never been part of the Argentineans' diet, and whose monocultures have caused job losses and displacement of rural populations towards the suburbs of poverty of the large cities, on a massive scale. The report also ignores the fact that cattle farming was displaced by soya to marginal areas and flood planes, and worse, to livestock feed lots, where rather than feeding on pastures, the cattle are fatted with grains, especially soya, with added antibiotics and hormones.

It further ignores that, before the introduction of commodities based on agrochemicals and GMs, Argentina was one of the countries with the highest certified organic production. The organic crops can no longer be produced, due to contamination, while Argentinean honey has been downgraded within the market, as a result of chemical residues. Once our country was known as the bread basket of the world and now we have become a soya republic. It is naïve to imagine that it would be possible to reduce the risks of desertification by rotation with cattle grazing. Throughout millions of hectares of monocultures, the soya barons have removed fences, drinking wells for cattle, and windmills. The soya monoculture is driven only by the reduction of costs and the increase of profits, at the expense of natural resources.

This model, which has produced an agriculture without farmers, the concentration of land ownership and mass depopulation of rural areas, cannot be reversed in the manner proposed in the document. In reality, the policy of the WWF is not to challenge the soya model, but to facilitate its implementation within the areas currently cultivated, while avoiding the social upheavals that are expected and feared.

Furthermore, the WWF is guilty of double standards when it states in the document that it is expected that the demand for exported soya, used mainly in animal feed, will more than double with the next 20 years. Matthias Diemer, head of the WWF's forest Conservation Initiative said, "The study shows that it is possible to achieve higher production of soya without destroying nature,"

By accepting the reality drawn up by the multinationals, the WWF is condemning the south of our continent to the role of forage producers, with no means of defending our food sovereignty and food security. The needs of the North are paramount in the policy of the WWF and there is no consideration for the growing poverty and hunger in Argentina. Their reasoning is to multiply the capacity of forage production of our countries, whilst preserving only a fraction of our forests and natural ecosystems. The pretension of making the growing soya production sustainable is at best naïve and at worst cynical.

The WWF document states that it is possible to reach greater production of soya without destroying the natural environment and that the more intensive and efficient use of land along the existing roads and close to large population centres will reduce the need to destroy virgin habitats. However the study indicates that for this scenario to function it is necessary that producers, investors, buyers, and regulators adopt and promote more sustainable practices and promote local governments to force compliance with land use laws and regulations effectively�. The authors of the WWF study do not appear to have verified the situation on the ground in relation to Soya production in Argentina: The expansion of mono­cultures has wiped out the green belts of large and small cities, composed of dairy units, poultry farms and family farms. Apart from providing local food, these farms limited the impact of large agricultural production on the urban areas. Now, soya reaches the outermost streets of the towns and, therefore, fumigations with Glyphosphate, 2.4D, Paraquat and endosulfan are causing serious health problems, such as cancer, birth defects and spontaneous abortions. In the small towns surrounded by the green desert of soya, some of the fumigation aircraft do not even switch off their fumigators when flying over urban areas, exposing the population to the above terrible hazards.

We offer the thought that a sovereign and socially just State ins achievable.

Other than through a major social upheaval caused by hunger and extreme poverty, the only way that our countries can come out of this impasse is by the people deciding to reconstruct the mechanisms of the State that were destroyed during the neoliberal economic phase. The reconstructed state would regulate exports (presently in the grip of multinationals) would set prices for basic foods relevant to the indigenous diet, would promote the production of seeds and the repopulation of empty territories, in conjunction with integrated local development.

The �Sustainable Soya� proposal of WWF which we reject, expresses a shameful attempt on the part of environmental groups and NGOs of the first world, to collaborate with the agro­businesses at our expense. But if those companies need such a form of collaboration, it is because they realise that their future is in jeopardy and that the people's of consciousness is awakening to the threats to their lives that the patenting and appropriation of seeds implies.

WWF and large NGOs, both in Europe and Latin America, intend to maintain the model, but fixing the rules to reduce its impacts and so palliate its inevitable consequences. GRR, on the other hand, declares war on the currently imposed agrarian model, knowing that it is not sustainable and that it would lead to total dependence, and that would transform our land into commodity production units, were people were treated as a dispensable resource.

We are a mass biotechnology experiment, a laboratory country for the Biotechnology multinationals, a Colonial Argentina. We intend to recover our food sovereignty and reconstruct a national project .

The Argentinean successes in export are also its most abject failure, because they deny our tradition as a country able to produce healthy foods and because, through this the country condemns itself to hunger and misery. Just as our country fails, when it fails to protect the interests of its people, so does Europe fail, when it imposes a regime of forced commodity production onto another continent. Globalised Europe, by attempting to maintain a standard of living close to that of the US, forcing us into the role of commodity providers to pay our External Debt, is nothing to do with a European Union for prosperity and peace, but a sad and perverse expression of the Europe of the dirty colonial past. Let us also remember that the External Debt mentioned above was imposed upon us during a military dictatorship, at the cost of widespread terror and thirty thousand lives.

GRR Rural Reflection Group

11 of October 2004

[email protected]

[email protected]