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AGRICULTURE-PARAGUAY: Legalisation of GM Crops Imminent

Alejandro Sciscioli

ASUNCION, Nov 10 2003 (IPS) - Paraguay’s Agriculture Ministry indicated that it is about to authorise the production and sale of transgenic crops, which are already widely cultivated despite a legal ban.

”I am inclined towards freeing up transgenic production,” said Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Antonio Ibáñez, who explained that he has not yet completed a round of consultations that will inform his final decision.

The minister said he was ”convinced that there is no alternative under the current circumstances.”

In spite of the ban on genetically modified (GM) crops, they account for most of the soybeans grown in this Southern Cone country.

Local environmental organisations have put up resistance to the legalisation of the production and marketing of GM crops.

María Ojeda, the head of the Department of Farm Registration in the Agriculture Ministry’s seeds division, pointed out to IPS that ”when you are talking about transgenics in Paraguay, you are talking exclusively about Roundup Ready soybeans.”

Ojeda, who is also the coordinator of the inter-institutional Biosafety Commission, said the illegal cultivation of Roundup Ready soybeans has expanded steadily in Paraguay since neighbouring Argentina authorised transgenic crops in 1996.

Argentina is the world’s third largest soybean producer and the second largest producer of GM crops.

”We have seen since 1997 that transgenic seeds are being smuggled in, from Argentina we believe,” said Ojeda.

But there have been howls of protest against the legalisation of transgenic crops. ”We pulled out of the Biosafety Commission two years ago because through our participation, we were endorsing certain decisions that we could not change, since we were in the minority,” Víctor Benítez, coordinator of the Network of Environmental Organisations, told IPS.

The activist said, however, that he believed civil society could make its voice heard in parliament and demand enforcement of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, to prevent the legalisation of GM products by a new bill that the government has drafted.

”The decree banning the commercial planting of transgenic soybeans is still in force,” he noted. ”If GM crops are legalised, that would merely amount to the whitewashing of a de facto situation, and the Ministry of Agriculture should explain what it has done to curb the cultivation of illegal soybeans.”

The activist said that behind the possible legalisation of GM crops in Paraguay lay ”pressure from agro-exporters and (U.S. biotech giant) Monsanto, which are very good at lobbying.”

Official estimates indicate that despite the ban, GM soybeans make up 80 percent of the one and a half million hectares planted in oilseeds in this country.

Other sources say the proportion is lower. Agronomist Carlos Passarieu, chief editor of the local farm magazine Datos Agropecuarios, put it at 60 percent, ”an estimate that emerges from comparing sales of conventional seeds to the total cultivated surface area,” he told IPS.

Passarieu said his statistics came from a survey he carried out for Auburn University in the southern U.S. state of Alabama on the cultivation of GM soybeans in Paraguay.

The preliminary results of the study, which surveyed 100 randomly selected farmers out of a total of around 3,000, found for example that the proportion of GM soybeans stood at 72 percent in the southwestern department of Itapúa.

A similar situation is facing the government of nearby Brazil, which drafted a national biosafety law in an attempt to reconcile the protests of environmentalists with the legitimisation of the de facto cultivation of soybeans, thousands of hectares of which are planted illegally in southern Brazil.

With respect to Minister Ibáñez’s recent statements on the possible legalisation of transgenic crops, Ojeda said that ”if sales of transgenic soybeans are authorised, farmers must clearly understand that the products that they are growing today and have planted in the past are still illegal.

”The authorisation, provided for by the new draft law on seeds, would only apply to those varieties that have met all the requisites and have gone through the required period of scientific testing, as well as the companies that completed the required cycle,” she said.

Under the bill, a variety of seed would have to be duly registered before it could be planted commercially.

However, to obtain a permit to sell a GM crop, the specific variety of seed must first undergo three years of research and testing in a given location, or two years if the trials are carried out simultaneously in more than one part of the country.

Ibáñez said that despite the existence of illegal transgenic soybean crops in Paraguay and the lack of clear labelling for such products, ”the international market has not reacted” unfavourably to Paraguay’s exports.

He cited the example of China, which purchases Paraguayan soybeans ”without any problem.”

Monsanto is the only company that has come close to the final phase of the legal requirements set in Paraguay for the planting of transgenic crops. Argentina’s leading seed company Nidera and the Brazilian cooperative Codetec have also signed an agreement with Monsanto allowing them to use its technology.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock drafted the bill that is ready to be submitted to parliament, with the aim of filling the gaps in Paraguay’s legislation on GM products.

”This bill covers all of the necessary steps for legalising the commercial planting of transgenic products, from the first time a crop is introduced into the country, to sales on the domestic market and exports,” said Ojeda.

The bill also includes the requirement that transgenic food products, grains or seeds must be clearly labelled as such.

In May 2001, Paraguay signed the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which t akes its name from the northern Colombian city where the draft document was completed, although final approval of the treaty took place in January 2000 in Montreal, Canada.

The protocol regulates the transborder movement of living organisms that are the products of biotechnology and that may have an adverse effect on biodiversity.

It creates safeguards such as a requirement for clear labelling of GM products, and allows countries to avoid uncontrolled imports of transgenic products until environmental impact studies have been completed.

Paraguay is in the process of ratifying the protocol, which went into effect in September. The treaty has made it through the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies’ Environment and Energy Commission, and all that is left is ratification by the plenary of the lower house of Congress, Celeste Benítez with the Secretariat of the Environment’s biosafety unit explained to IPS.

According to Benítez, the ratification of the Cartagena Protocol is not incompatible with the bill drafted by the government that will legalise transgenic products.

”The protocol cannot work separately from any other law at a national level, because it will become part of the legal framework,” she said.

Benítez said the ratification of the protocol will not hamper trade in transgenic products, but will ”make the process transparent.”