A view of Enresa, one of Argentina’s biodiesel plants. The country's biofuel production capacity is four million tons, but more than half is idle, due to a lack of external markets and limitations in domestic consumption. Credit: Courtesy of CEPREB

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 18 2017 (IPS)

The Argentine biodiesel industry, which in the last 10 years has become one of the most powerful in the world, has an uncertain future, faced with protectionist measures in the United States and Europe and doubts in the international scenario about the environmental impact of these fuels based on agricultural products.

In August, the U.S. government blocked in practice the import of Argentine biodiesel, which is made exclusively from soybeans, by imposing high import duties, arguing dumping, or unfair competition with local soybean producers.

One month later, Argentina recovered, at least partially, from the economic effect of this measure, when the European Union (EU) complied with a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling and lowered – although they did not eliminate – the anti-dumping tariffs they had imposed on the product in 2013.

"The emissions avoided by the substitution of oil could be less than those generated to transport soybeans, which in Argentina is done by truck. In addition, soy accounts for more than half of all deforestation in recent years." -- Hernán Giardini
“We are convinced that there is protectionism hidden behind false arguments. The decision by the Donald Trump administration not only affects consumers in the U.S., where fuel prices are already on the rise, but also delays the replacement of oil,” said Gustavo Idígoras, international relations consultant for the Argentine Chamber of Biofuels.

In his view, “the lowering of tariffs in the EU allows us to recover a commercial opportunity that had been closed arbitrarily, but it will not replace the U.S. market.”

The EU had heavily invested in biofuels until 2012, but began to reduce its use since 2015, when it considered that devoting agricultural raw materials to transport fueled deforestation and accelerated climate change.

This reasoning was disputed in his dialogue with IPS by Idígoras, who was a commercial attaché for Argentina before the EU in Brussels between 2004 and 2009.

“The use of biodiesel generates 70 percent savings in emissions of greenhouse gases, as international studies show, and is a fundamental tool in the fight against global warming,” he argued.

Argentina, a major soy producer since the commercialisation of the first transgenic seeds from biotech giant Monsanto was authorised in the 1990s, began to develop its biodiesel industry in 2007.

That year, a law to promote biofuels came into force, requiring a certain proportion to be included in petroleum-based fuels sold in the country.

“Today the country has an installed capacity to produce 4.4 million tons per year of biodiesel, 70 percent of which is produced by 10 transnational corporations.

“This country is the third largest producer of soybean oil biodiesel, after the United States and Brazil, but it is the leading exporter of biofuels, taking all raw materials into account,” explained Julio Calzada, director of Economic Studies at the Rosario Stock Exchange (BCR).

Most of the biodiesel-producing plants are near the central city of Rosario, where soy exports are shipped out from its river port to the Atlantic Ocean.

However, more than half of the national production capacity is currently idle.

The domestic market consumes 1.2 million tons, due to the obligation to incorporate 10 percent of biofuel into diesel.

Although the industry is pressing the government of Mauricio Macri to increase the proportion, automotive companies are lobbying in the opposite direction, arguing that it could affect the performance of the engines.

The country also produces ethanol, from maize and sugarcane, but in an amount that only covers domestic use. In 2016, according to official data, it produced 815 million litres, destined almost entirely to be mixed with fuel sold in the country, which according to the 2007 law should include 12 percent biofuel.

In 2016, Argentine exports of biodiesel amounted to 1.6 million tons which generated 1.175 billion dollars, according to data from the BCR.

However, more than 90 percent of that was exported to the United States, which in August brought purchases to a halt when it slapped an average tariff of 57 percent on Argentine biodiesel.

The reason given was that Argentina’s production of biodiesel is locally subsidised, since its exports are not taxed, unlike soybeans and soybean oil which do pay export taxes amounting to 30 and 27 percent of their value, respectively.

The decision left the Argentine government in a particularly uncomfortable position, because it was adopted only a few days after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was given a friendly reception in Buenos Aires, where he praised the economic reforms carried out by President Mauricio Macri, in power since December 2015.

The Argentine Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. decision in an Aug. 24 statement, saying that biodiesel “derives its success (in the U.S. market) from the recognised competitiveness of the soybean production chain in our country” and announced negotiations to try to reverse the Washington measure.

However, not only have they not been successful so far, but reportedly, in the near future the United States could raise import duties on Argentine biodiesel, due to the alleged unfair competition.

The EU also accused Argentina of dumping – selling at a lower price than normal – when it imposed a 24 percent tariff on Argentine biodiesel in 2013 – a rate that had been miscalculated, according to the WTO’s March 2016 ruling, which the EU complied with last month.

However, it is not only economic issues but also environmental ones that cast a shadow of uncertainty on the future of Argentine biodiesel.

“Beyond the fact that using crops for fuel goes against food uses, Argentine biodiesel is not green at all,” said Hernán Giardini, coordinator of the Greenpeace Argentina Forests campaign.

“The emissions avoided by the substitution of oil could be less than those generated to transport soybeans, which in Argentina is done by truck. In addition, soy accounts for more than half of all deforestation in recent years,” he told IPS.

On the other hand, Jorge Hilbert, an international consultant at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, said that the environmental criticism against Argentine biodiesel actually arise from economic and political interests.

“Argentine biofuels are meeting the goals of emission reduction agreed at a global level, given the characteristics of our agricultural system,” he told IPS.

Hilbert claimed that “80 percent of the grains used are grown in the Rosario area, in soils with more than 100 years of agriculture, where there are no problems of deforestation or biodiversity.”

“The oil used for biodiesel is a byproduct of the soybean that Argentina produces in such quantity that there is no market for it. Its use in biofuel does not compete with food use,” he argued.

For Daniel Lema, an economist who specialises in agriculture, “U.S. and European producers are affected by Argentine biodiesel, and the problem is that our tax scheme gives them an argument for applying protectionist measures.

“Argentina should unify its taxes on all by-products of soy in order to not lose markets,” he told IPS.

Lema warned about another source of uncertainty with regard to biofuel. “Biodiesel faces another obstacle: it is more expensive than diesel derived from petroleum, and for the time being consumers have shown no signs of being willing to pay more in exchange for reducing emissions of polluting gases,” he said.

Zambian cotton grower sitting on his bales. Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market. Credit: Nebert Mulenga/IPS

By Haidee Swanby
MELVILLE, South Africa, Jun 15 2015 (IPS)

Genetically modified (GM) cotton has been produced globally for almost two decades, yet to date only three African countries have grown GM cotton on a commercial basis – South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan.

African governments have been sceptical of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for decades and have played a key role historically in ensuring that international law – the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety – takes a precautionary stance towards genetic engineering in food and agriculture.

They have also imposed various restrictions and bans on the cultivation and importation of GMOs, including on genetically modified (GM) food aid.

But now resistance to GM cultivation is crumbling as a number of other African countries such as Malawi, Ghana, Swaziland and Cameroon appear to be on the verge of allowing their first cultivation of GM cotton, with Nigeria and Ethiopia planning to follow suit in the next two to three years.“Scrutiny of actual experiences [with GM cotton] reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production”

Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market.

At the moment African cotton productivity is declining – it now stands at only half the world average – while global productivity is increasing. The promise of improving productivity and reducing pesticide use through the adoption of GM cotton is thus compelling.

However, African leaders and cotton producers need to take a close look at how GM cotton has fared in South Africa and Burkina Faso to date, particularly its socioeconomic impact on smallholder farmers.

Scrutiny of actual experiences reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production.

As stated by a farmer during a Malian public consultation on GMOs, “What’s the point of encouraging us to increase yields with GMOs when we can’t get a decent price for what we already produce?”

In Burkina Faso, the tide turned against GM cotton after just five seasons as low yields and low quality fibres persisted. In South Africa, GM cotton brought devastating debts to smallholders and the local credit institution went bust. Last season, smallholders contributed to less than three percent of South Africa’s total production.

In Malawi, Monsanto has already applied to the government for a permit to commercialise Bollgard II, its GM pest resistant cotton, to which there has been a strong reaction from civil society and an alliance of organisations has submitted substantive objections.

Even Malawi’s cotton industry, the Cotton Development Trust (CDT), has publically voiced its concerns over a number of issues, including inadequate field trials, the high cost of GM seed and related inputs, and blurred intellectual property arrangements.

In addition, CDT has expressed unease over the potential development of pest resistance and the inevitable applications of herbicide chemicals.

Regional economic communities (RECs), such as the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), are also key players in readying their member states for the commercialisation of and trade in GM cotton, through harmonised biosafety policies. Together COMESA and ECOWAS incorporate 34 countries in Africa.

The COMESA Policy on Biotechnology and Biosafety was adopted in February 2014 and member states validated the implementation plan in March 2015.

The ECOWAS Biosafety Policy has been through an arduous process for more than a decade now and pronounced conflicts between trade imperatives and safety checks have stalled agreement between stakeholders. However, recent reports indicate that agreement between member states and donor parties has been reached and a final draft of the Biosafety Policy will soon be published.

Experiments and open field trials with GM cotton have been running for many years in a number of African countries and are increasingly at a stage where applications for commercial release are imminent.

However, there are many obstacles to the birth of a new GM era in Africa, chief among them the fact that this high-end technology is simply not appropriate to resource-poor farmers operating on tiny pieces of land, together with fierce opposition from civil society and sometimes also from governments.

Attempts by the biotech industry to impose policies that pander to investors’ desires at the expense of environmental and human safety may be easier to realise at the regional level, through the trade-friendly RECs. This is where many biotech industry resources and efforts are currently being channelled.

Despite whatever legal environments may be implemented to enable the introduction of GM cotton regionally or nationally, the fact remains that Africa’s cotton farmers are operating in a difficult global sector – prices are erratic and distorted by unfair subsidies in the North, institutional support for their activities is often lacking, and high input costs are already annihilating profit margins.

Fighting for the introduction of more expensive technologies that have already proven themselves technologically unsound in a smallholder environment is deeply irresponsible and short-sighted.

It is time that African governments turn their resources to improving the local environments in which cotton producers operate, including institutional and infrastructural support that can bring long-term sustainability to the sector, without placing further burdens and vulnerability on some of the most marginalised people in the world.

Civil society actions will continue to vehemently oppose and challenge the false solutions promised by GM cotton and will insist on just trading environments and true and sustainable upliftment for African cotton producers.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* This opinion piece is based on the author’s more extensive paper titled Cottoning on to the Lie, published by the African Centre for Biodiversity, June 2015

Excerpt:

“There is no doubt that African small-scale producers need much greater support in their efforts, but GM seeds which are designed for large-scale industrial production have no place in smallholder systems”. Credit: La Via Campesina/2007/Creative Commons

By Haidee Swanby and Mariann Bassey Orovwuje
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 1 2015 (IPS)

The most persistent myth about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is that they are necessary to feed a growing global population.

Highly effective marketing campaigns have drilled it into our heads that GMOs will produce more food on less land in an environmentally friendly manner. The mantra has been repeated so often that it is considered to be truth.

Now this mantra has come to Africa, sung by the United States administration and multinational corporations like Monsanto, seeking to open new markets for a product that has been rejected by so many others around the globe.“It may be tempting to believe that hunger can be solved with technology, but African social movements have pointed out that skewed power relations are the bedrock of hunger in Africa”

While many countries have implemented strict legal frameworks to regulate GMOs, African nations have struggled with the legal, scientific and infrastructural resources to do so.

This has delayed the introduction of GMOs into Africa, but it has also provided the proponents of GMOs with a plum opportunity to offer their assistance and, in the process, helping to craft laws on the continent that promote the introduction of barely regulated GMOs and create investor-friendly environments for agribusiness.

Their line is that African governments must adopt GMOs as a matter of urgency to deal with hunger and that laws implementing pesky and expensive safety measures, or requiring assessments of socio-economic impacts, will only act as obstructions.

To date only seven African countries have complete legal frameworks to deal with GMOs and only four – South Africa, Burkina Faso, Egypt and Sudan – have approved commercial cultivation of a GM crop.

The drive to open markets for GMOs in Africa is not only happening through “assistance” resulting in permissive legal frameworks for GMOs, but also through an array of “philanthropical” projects, most of them funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

One such project is Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), funded by the Gates Foundation in collaboration with Monsanto. Initially the project sought to develop drought tolerant maize varieties in five pilot countries but, as the project progressed, it incorporated one of Monsanto’s most lucrative commercial traits into the mix – MON810, which enables the plant to produce its own pesticide.

Interestingly, MON810 has recently come off patent, but Monsanto retains ownership when it is stacked with another gene, in this case, drought tolerant.

WEMA has provided a convenient vehicle for the introduction of Monsanto’s controversial product, but it has also used its influence to shape GM-related policy in the countries where it works.

The project has refused to run field trials in Tanzania and Mozambique until those countries amend their “strict liability” laws, which will make WEMA, and future companies selling GMOs, liable for any damages they may cause.

WEMA has also complained to governments about clauses in their law that require assessment of socio-economic impacts of GMOs, saying that assessment and approvals should be based solely on hard science, which is also often influenced or financed by the industry.

African civil society and smallholders’ organisations are fighting for the kind of biosafety legislation that will safeguard health and environment against the potential risks of GMOs, not the kind that promotes the introduction of this wholly inappropriate technology.

About 80 percent of Africa’s food is produced by smallholders, who seldom farm on more than five hectares of land and usually on much less.  The majority of these farmers are women, who have scant access to finance or secure land tenure.

That they still manage to provide the lion’s share of the continents’ food, usually without formal seed, chemicals, mechanisation, irrigation or subsidies, is testament to their resilience and innovation.

African farmers have a lot to lose from the introduction of GMOs – the rich diversity of African agriculture, its robust resilience and the social cohesion engendered through cultures of sharing and collective effort could be replaced by a handful of monotonous commodity crops owned by foreign masters. 

There is no doubt that African small-scale producers need much greater support in their efforts, but GM seeds which are designed for large-scale industrial production have no place in smallholder systems.

The mantra that GMOs are necessary for food security is hijacking the policy space that should be providing appropriate solutions for the poorest farmers.

Only a tiny fraction of farmers will ever afford the elite GM technology package – for example in South Africa, where over 85 percent of maize production is genetically modified, GM maize seed costs 2-5 times more than conventional seed, must be bought annually and requires the extensive use of toxic and expensive chemicals and fertilisers.

What is more, despite 16 years of cultivating GM maize, soya and cotton, South Africa’s food security continues to decline, with some 46 percent of the population categorised as food insecure.

It may be tempting to believe that hunger can be solved with technology, but African social movements have pointed out that skewed power relations – such as unfair trade agreements and subsidies that perennially entrench poverty, or the patenting of seed and imposition of expensive and patented technology onto the world’s most vulnerable and risk averse communities – are the bedrock of hunger in Africa.

Without changing these fundamental power relationships and handing control over food production to smallholders in Africa, hunger cannot be eradicated.

A global movement is growing and demanding that governments support small-scale food producers and “agro-ecology” instead of corporate agriculture, an agricultural system that is based on collaboration with nature and is appropriate for small-scale production, where producers are free to plant and exchange seeds and operate in strong local markets.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

This opinion piece was originally published by Common Dreams.

Excerpt:

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, United States, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

At the same time as the United States, Canada and the European Union announced a set of new sanctions against Russia in mid-December last year, Ukraine received 350 million dollars in U.S. military aid, coming on top of a one billion dollar aid package approved by the U.S. Congress in March 2014. 

Western governments’ further involvement in the Ukraine conflict signals their confidence in the cabinet appointed by the new government earlier in December 2014. This new government is unique given that three of its most important ministries were granted to foreign-born individuals who received Ukrainian citizenship just hours before their appointment.

Frédéric Mousseau

The Ministry of Finance went to Natalie Jaresko, a U.S.-born and educated businesswoman who has been working in Ukraine since the mid-1990s, overseeing a private equity fund established by the U.S. government to invest in the country. Jaresko is also the CEO of Horizon Capital, an investment firm that administers various Western investments in the country.

As unusual as it may seem, this appointment is consistent with what looks more like a takeover of the Ukrainian economy by Western interests. In two reports – The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture and Walking on the West Side: The World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict – the Oakland Institute has documented this takeover, particularly in the agricultural sector.

A major factor in the crisis that led to deadly protests and eventually to president Viktor Yanukovych’s removal from office in February 2014 was his rejection of a European Union (EU) Association agreement aimed at expanding trade and integrating Ukraine with the
EU – an agreement that was tied to a 17 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

After the president’s departure and the installation of a pro-Western government, the IMF initiated a reform programme that was a condition of its loan with the goal of increasing private investment in the country.“The manoeuvring for control over the country’s [Ukraine’s] agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War”

The package of measures includes reforming the public provision of water and energy, and, more important, attempts to address what the World Bank identified as the “structural roots” of the current economic crisis in Ukraine, notably the high cost of doing business in the country.

The Ukrainian agricultural sector has been a prime target for foreign private investment and is logically seen by the IMF and World Bank as a priority sector for reform. Both institutions praise the new government’s readiness to follow their advice.

For example, the foreign-driven agricultural reform roadmap provided to Ukraine includes facilitating the acquisition of agricultural land, cutting food and plant regulations and controls, and reducing corporate taxes and custom duties.

The stakes around Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector – the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat – could not be higher. Ukraine is known for its ample fields of rich black soil, and the country boasts more than 32 million hectares of fertile, arable land – the equivalent of one-third of the entire arable land in the European Union.

The manoeuvring for control over the country’s agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War.

The presence of foreign corporations in Ukrainian agriculture is growing quickly, with more than 1.6 million hectares signed over to foreign companies for agricultural purposes in recent years. While Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont have been in Ukraine for quite some time, their investments in the country have grown significantly over the past few years.

Cargill is involved in the sale of pesticides, seeds and fertilisers and has recently expanded its agricultural investments to include grain storage, animal nutrition and a stake in UkrLandFarming, the largest agribusiness in the country.

Similarly, Monsanto has been in Ukraine for years but has doubled the size of its team over the last three years. In March 2014, just weeks after Yanukovych was deposed, the company invested 140 million dollars in building a new seed plant in Ukraine.

DuPont has also expanded its investments and announced in June 2013 that it too would be investing in a new seed plant in the country.

Western corporations have not just taken control of certain profitable agribusinesses and agricultural activities, they have now initiated a vertical integration of the agricultural sector and extended their grip on infrastructure and shipping.

For instance, Cargill now owns at least four grain elevators and two sunflower seed processing plants used for the production of sunflower oil. In December 2013, the company bought a “25% +1 share” in a grain terminal at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk with a capacity of 3.5 million tons of grain per year. 

All aspects of Ukraine’s agricultural supply chain – from the production of seeds and other agricultural inputs to the actual shipment of commodities out of the country – are thus increasingly controlled by Western firms.

European institutions and the U.S. government have actively promoted this expansion. It started with the push for a change of government at a time when president Yanukovych was seen as pro-Russian interests. This was further pushed, starting in February 2014, through the promotion of a “pro-business” reform agenda, as described by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker when she met with Prime Minister Arsenly Yatsenyuk in October 2014.

The European Union and the United States are working hand in hand in the takeover of Ukrainian agriculture. Although Ukraine does not allow the production of genetically modified (GM) crops, the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, which ignited the conflict that ousted Yanukovych, includes a clause (Article 404) that commits both parties to cooperate to “extend the use of biotechnologies” within the country.

This clause is surprising given that most European consumers reject GM crops. However, it creates an opening to bring GM products into Europe, an opportunity sought after by large agro-seed companies such as Monsanto.

Opening up Ukraine to the cultivation of GM crops would go against the will of European citizens, and it is unclear how the change would benefit Ukrainians.

It is similarly unclear how Ukrainians will benefit from this wave of foreign investment in their agriculture, and what impact these investments will have on the seven million local farmers.

Once they eventually look away from the conflict in the Eastern “pro-Russian” part of the country, Ukrainians may wonder what remains of their country’s ability to control its food supply and manage the economy to their own benefit.

As for U.S. and European citizens, will they eventually awaken from the headlines and grand rhetoric about Russian aggression and human rights abuses and question their governments’ involvement in the Ukraine conflict? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Agroecology is a different way of seeing the food system because it deals with issues related to who gets access to resources and the processes that determine this access. Photo credit: UN Photo

By Geneviève Lavoie-Mathieu
ROME, Sep 24 2014 (IPS)

“It is time for a new agricultural model that ensures that enough quality food is produced where it is most needed, that preserves nature and that delivers ecosystem services of local and global relevance” – in a word, it is time for agroecology.

The call came from Pablo Tittonell of Wageningen University, one of the world’s leading institutions in the field of agriculture science, speaking at the International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition, organised by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The symposium, held at FAO headquarters in Rome on Sep. 18-19, gathered experts from many backgrounds, including scientists, scholars, policy-makers and farmers.In times of climate change, food insecurity and poverty, “agroecology, especially when paired with principles of food sovereignty and food justice, offers opportunities to address all of these problems" – open letter in support of the International Symposium on Agroecology

In an open letter ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Summit on Sep. 23 in New York, some 70 scientists and scholars said that in times of climate change, food insecurity and poverty, “agroecology, especially when paired with principles of food sovereignty and food justice, offers opportunities to address all of these problems.”

“The FAO symposium contributes to building momentum for agroecology in Rome,” Gaëtan Vanloqueren, an agro-economist and one of the speakers, told IPS. Since 2008, there has been a renewed debate on agricultural models and the food system in general, he explained, but this symposium is, up to now, the most significant effort made by FAO.

Vanloqueren, who was adviser to former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, has a positive view of recent interest by a number of organisations in Europe and elsewhere to talk, research and promote agroecology, but “the danger”, he told IPS, “is that it becomes the new ‘sustainable development’, a new buzzword and catch-all phrase that can mean just about anything.”

“There remains a large amount of misunderstanding related to agroecology,” said Luca Chinotti, Oxfam’s GROW campaign adviser. For example, “a lot of people think that organic agriculture is the same as agroecology” and “sustainable agriculture is used by different people, meaning very different things,” the Oxfam spokesperson told IPS.

The expression ‘sustainable agriculture’, for example, is used by both Monsanto, the ag-biotech giant, and Greenpeace, the environmental organisation which strongly opposes the use of genetically modified seeds.

There is much work that needs to be done with respect to informing people about what agroecology really is, Chinotti told IPS.

According to Vanloqueren, agroecology includes a set of practices, such as the diversifying of species and genetic resources and the recycling of nutrients and organic matter. But it is also more than the scientific study of ecology applied to agriculture. It encompasses a set of socio-economic and political principals that questions the basis of the current dominant agricultural system.

“Agroecology should not be seen as a model or a technological package that can be replicated anywhere at any time. There are very few practices that can be applied to a great number of situations,” explained Celso Marcatto, technical officer on sustainable agriculture at ActionAid International.

This is why, he said, agroecology “has more to do with introducing new ways of thinking, rather than distributing ready-made solutions.”

Agroecology is a different way of seeing the food system because it deals with issues related to who gets access to resources and the processes that determine this access. That is why agroecology is also considered a social movement.

“The principals of autonomy, the importance of the combination of traditional knowledge and economic knowledge, the co-construction of solutions by peasants’ organisations, researchers and citizens are key in defining agroecology and are the basis of what distinguishes the movement from the so-called ‘sustainable ecological intensification’,” Vanloqueren told IPS.

At the centre of agroecology is the “role of farmers that needs to be scaled out and scaled across,” said Vanloqueren.

Agroeology is also about substituting inputs with knowledge, he added, and it is about fostering autonomy through both knowledge and independence from global markets. Finally, agroecology is about social equity and about democracy.

However, many obstacles remain in the way of convincing policy-makers and donors to advocate and promote the adoption of agroecology.

Quentin Delachapelle, a French farmer and vice-president of the Federation Nationale des Centres d’Initiatives pour Valoriser l’Agriculture et le Milieu rural (FNCIVAM), told the FAO symposium that one of the main obstacles to the larger adoption of agroecology is that it is based on a longer term vision.

“Unfortunately”, he said, “current public and market policies are based solely on a short-term perspective.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Cruz Esmeralda Mejía, Maybelyne Palacios and Rosa María Rivera growing plants from improved maize seed in the La Maroma cooperative, in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
JIQUILISCO, El Salvador, Jul 5 2014 (IPS)

Under a searing sun, surrounded by a sea of young maize plants, Gladys Cortez expresses her fears that her employment in the cooperative that produces seed for the Salvadoran government may be at risk, if United States companies achieve participation in seed procurement.

“This is our source of income to support our children,” Cortez told IPS as she continued her regular farming tasks at the La Maroma cooperative, one of the seed producing establishments located in La Noria, in the municipality of Jiquilisco, in the eastern department of Usulután.

The U.S. government, through its ambassador in El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, has set conditions on the delivery of a development aid package worth 277 million dollars from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. foreign aid agency. It wants the country to open its seed procurement process to U.S. companies.

Aponte told local media that excluding U.S. companies violates the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Central America- Dominican Republic (DR-CAFTA), which was signed by El Salvador in 2004.

Since 2011, the Salvadoran government has bought 88,000 quintals of maize seed annually from 18 producers, for distribution to 400,000 small farmers as part of its Family Agriculture Plan. Each farmer receives 10 kilos of improved seed and 45 kilos of fertilisers a year.

Among the 18 producers are the La Maroma cooperative and four others in the Bajo Lempa region, in the south of the department of Usulután.

These lands were divided up and distributed to ex-combatants of the former guerrilla organisation, now a political party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) after the 1992 peace accords that put an end to 12 years of civil war that cost 75,000 lives.

The first FMLN government, in power since 2009, opened certified seed procurement to local producers.

The administration of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla commander who took office on Jun. 1, is maintaining links with the cooperatives, but has also indicated willingness to include international companies in the seed tendering process.

Certified seeds are varieties with higher yields and better resistance to adverse climate effects. They are produced by crossing genetic strains that have not been modified, in contrast to transgenic seeds. The cooperatives also produce some native seeds, on a smaller scale.

Seed quality is monitored and approved by the Salvadoran Ministry of Agriculture, which paid a total of 25.9 million dollars on seed purchases in 2013, most of them maize and beans which are staple foods in El Salvador.

Until the new model was implemented in 2011, 70 percent of the market was cornered by a subsidiary of U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, Semillas Cristiani Burkard. Since then, other producers have entered the field, like the cooperatives, with better quality certified seeds and more competitive prices.

Last year’s seed was purchased by an executive decree of December 2012, with the approval of Congress, and in practice U.S. companies were excluded. The U.S. embassy demanded a public and “transparent” tender process.

In January 2014, lawmakers approved a new decree allowing international companies to participate in the tendering process. However, the bidding in April was won by the same 18 producers.

Ambassador Aponte is now pressing for a different procurement process that will favour U.S. companies. This position is being criticised by social organisations and rural producers, who protested in front of the embassy in San Salvador in June.

“The embassy’s position serves to promote Monsanto’s seeds,” environmentalist Ricardo Navarro told IPS, referring to the world leader in transgenic seeds, against which many protests have been held in Latin American countries.

Aponte did not mention Monsanto in her comments, but according to Navarro “it is obvious she is referring to Monsanto, the largest company in the sector,” whose local branch “lost a market they thought belonged to them.”

The embassy did not grant an interview with economic adviser John Barrett, requested by IPS.

But in a press release on Wednesday Jul. 2 it expressed “satisfaction with the government’s expressed commitment to carry out future purchases of corn and bean seeds in a transparent competitive manner that respects both Salvadoran law and DR-CAFTA.”

As for Monsanto, it only sent IPS an e-mail signed by spokesman Tom Helscher, denying any part in the embassy’s campaign.

The discord has reached Washington. Sixteen members of Congress sent a letter Jul. 1 to Secretary of State John Kerry, expressing concern over the pressure exerted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in favour of the embassy campaign in San Salvador.

Nathan Weller, the head of EcoViva, a U.S. organisation that works on development projects in Bajo Lempa, told IPS that some U.S. companies have won contracts from the Salvadoran government, not through public tendering, but by direct purchasing or invitation.

Both methods are legal, but they lack the transparency that the embassy is calling for for seed procurement.

For example, in 2009 and 2010 Chevron Caribbean was awarded direct contracts for fuel supply, for 340,000 and 361,000 dollars respectively, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The company “offered products at a much higher price (than the competition), and yet USTR made no comment,” Weller complained.

Seeds of a better life  

Growing seeds has also promoted employment in an area with a lot of poverty.

In rural areas, 43 percent of households live below the poverty line, compared to 29.9 percent of urban households, according to the 2013 annual survey by the Ministry of Economics.

“In addition to creating employment, we are demonstrating the productive potential of the local cooperatives,” campesino (small farmer) leader Juan Luna, the coordinator of the Asociación Mangle agricultural programme, told IPS.

Gladys Cortez, hard at work caring for young maize plants at the La Maroma cooperative, has work thanks to the seed programme.

“As well as the jobs, we are given seeds to grow to feed ourselves,” said Cortez, a 36-year-old single mother of a 17-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl.

Alongside her, about 50 men and women worked in the maize fields of La Maroma. Most of them wore long-sleeved shirts and hats to protect them from sunburn, on the day IPS visited the cooperative. They are all paid five dollars a day.

In the Bajo Lempa area alone, about 15,000 campesinos are employed growing improved seeds, the cooperativists estimate. They have work for longer periods than on traditional plantations, because more care and attention is required.

“We don’t earn a great deal, but the fact of having an income is very positive for a single mother like me,” Cortez said.

A boy watches a protest against Monsanto in the central Argentine town of Malvinas Argentinas. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, May 20 2014 (IPS)

The advertising department of Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta was on a roll in early 2004 when it published a map that dubbed a large area of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay the “United Republic of Soy”.

In this “republic” more than 46 million hectares of transgenic soy are sprayed with 600 million litres of the herbicide glyphosate and are largely responsible for the deforestation of 500,000 hectares a year in the past decade, according to estimates by the international non-profit organisation GRAIN.

The expansion of agricultural biotechnology in South America has occurred under governments described as progressive, and has fuelled a debate between those who see it as scientific and economic progress and those who stress the social, environmental and political damage caused.

According to GRAIN, global biotech corporations stepped up their campaign to spread transgenic or genetically modified (GM) seeds in 2012, when most of the Southern Cone countries had governments that were critical of neoliberal policies and that were in favour of a state that played a strong role with respect to social, educational, health and economic questions.

The two agricultural powerhouses in the region, Argentina and Brazil, are now among the world’s leaders in GM crops, which require large amounts of pesticides and herbicides.

This has to do with “the blind belief among progressive sectors in scientific and technological advances as providers of well-being and progress,” GRAIN Latin America spokesman Carlos Vicente told Tierramérica.

“The corporate power behind GM crops is not questioned, and the socioenvironmental impacts are not analysed,” he said.

There is also an element of “pragmatism,” he said, referring to “the alliance with agribusiness to maintain governability,” especially in Argentina, where taxes on the enormous exports of soy “are a major source of revenue for the state,” Vicente said.

Paradoxically, these earnings help finance “the social programmes that provide assistance to those who are expelled by the agribusiness model,” added the spokesman for GRAIN, an international NGO that promotes food security and works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

In Argentina, the U.S. biotech corporation Monsanto controls 86 percent of the market for transgenic seeds, and is the company that generates the most noise. But others are quietly advancing, like Syngenta, Raúl Montenegro, the head of the Environmental Defence Foundation (FUNAM), told Tierramérica.

In his view, the struggle against the construction of a plant to process transgenic corn seed in Malvinas Argentinas, a poor community east of the capital of the central Argentine province of Córdoba, prompted other corporations to keep a low profile and “avoid announcing the location of their future installations.”

On the list, Vicente includes other companies that control millions of hectares, such as Germany’s Bayer and BASF, the U.S. Cargill, Switzerland’s Nestlé, and the Argentina-based Bunge.

Syngenta did not respond to Tierramérica’s request for an interview. But its communiqués are clear enough.

In a statement on its 2013 fiscal results that says Latin America is spearheading Syngenta’s growth, the company stressed that its 14.68 billion dollars in revenue were driven by seven percent growth in Latin America and six percent growth in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. In North America, meanwhile, sales fell two percent.

The strong performance in Latin America was driven by Brazil, where “Syngenta’s expanding soybean seed portfolio registered significant gains with the launch of new varieties,” said the company’s Chief Executive Officer Mike Mack.

These corporations make their profits at the cost of an increase in health and environmental problems caused by pesticides, the displacement of small farmers and indigenous people, and the growing concentration of property ownership, said Vicente.

But, he added, these are only seen as “collateral damage” by the governments of “the United Republic of Soy.”

In Argentina, President Cristina Fernández and her ministers “repeat ad nauseam that ‘we produce food for 400 million people’ when what we actually produce are 55 million tonnes of soy bean forage,” he added.

Enrique Martínez, former president of the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI), reminded Tierramérica of Monsanto’s lobbying for a law on seeds “that would validate not only patents on species but also the charging of royalties and the regulation of ownership of harvested seeds.”

Martínez, head of the Evita Movement’s Institute for Popular Production, said he believes the law won’t be approved, due to the pressure of public opinion.

In his opinion, the government does not defend an agricultural model based on transgenics. “What it does is argue that the market works well in automatic terms, based on the supposition that productivity improves in a systematic manner, and that this benefits the community,” he said.

But that logic “is not correct,” he said. “We need studies that show that Monsanto has appropriated the majority of the immediate economic benefits, turning farmers into simple hostages of this scheme.”

He added, however, that “biotechnology should not be reviled as the cause of our problems.

“That is a sectarian way of looking at things,” he said. What is needed, he argued, is “the democratisation of knowledge and know-how, to enable an expansion of the actors so that production is not concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.”

Environmental questions “are only one aspect,” he said. “The key is the construction of value chains that depend on the decisions of a corporation. That is what must be fixed.”

Economist João Pedro Stédile, a leader of the La Vía Campesina global peasant movement and Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), said the phenomenon did not reflect an ideological contradiction on the part of progressive governments.

“The movement of capital over agriculture to impose a dominant model based on monoculture, transgenic seeds and toxic agrochemicals has its own logic that does not depend on governments,” Stédile told Tierramérica.

Governments “fool themselves” because of the volume of production and the positive trade balance that this agribusiness model provides, but it does not generate development or distribute wealth, he argued.

Of the 70 million hectares of land under cultivation in Brazil, 88 percent is dedicated to soy, maize, sugar cane and eucalyptus, he pointed out. “So naturally social problems and protests against that model without a future are going to increase,” Stédile said.

And biotech companies know that.

The vice president of Monsanto Argentina, Pablo Vaquero, warned in March that the conflict that has blocked construction of a plant near the city of Córdoba in central Argentina “is a threat to the entire productive model.”

“Today they come out against Monsanto, but it is an excuse to attack the entire sector,” he said.

Vicente says a broad debate on these issues is still needed.

But he stressed achievements such as the blocking of the seeds law in Argentina, restrictions on spraying in some municipalities, and the awareness raised by the National Campaign Against Agrotoxics and for Life.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Use of Roundup Ready crops has been so widespread in the United States over the past decade and a half that farmers have increasingly found themselves battling weeds that have evolved resistance to the herbicide’s key ingredient, glyphosate. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 2 2014 (IPS)

Two key federal agencies here are in the final stages of approving a new herbicide-resistant crop “system” that would constitute the second phase of genetically engineered agriculture, following an announcement this week.

To date, the only herbicide-resistant plants approved in the United States have been related to Monsanto’s Roundup Ready system. This system uses six crops genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide Roundup, also produced by Monsanto, a U.S.-based company.“It’s advertised as a solution to the problem of glyphosate-resistant weeds, but in fact the weeds will rapidly evolve resistance and become more difficult to control – leading to what we call the pesticide treadmill." -- Bill Freese

Yet use of Roundup Ready crops has been so widespread in the United States over the past decade and a half that farmers have increasingly found themselves battling weeds that have evolved resistance to the herbicide’s key ingredient, glyphosate.

According to an industry survey released last year, the amount of U.S. farmland infested with glyphosate-resistant weeds has almost doubled since 2010, to more than 61 million acres, with half of U.S. farmers reporting glyphosate-resistant weeds in their fields in 2012.

In response, Dow AgroSciences, another U.S. company, has produced a new set of crops that have been genetically engineered to be resistant to both glyphosate and another chemical, 2,4-D, known most notoriously as half of the infamous Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange. The company says approval could bring in a billion dollars in revenues.

“The Dow proposal would be the first major product of the next generation of genetically engineered crops,” Bill Freese, a senior policy analyst with the Centre for Food Safety, a watchdog group here, told IPS.

“It’s advertised as a solution to the problem of glyphosate-resistant weeds, but in fact the weeds will rapidly evolve resistance and become more difficult to control – leading to what we call the pesticide treadmill. As we’ve seen with Roundup Ready, these systems are extremely good at fostering resistant weeds.”

On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opened a 30-day public comment period on Dow’s application, specifically on its specialised use of 2,4-D. The other agency in charge of deciding on the application, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has already given its provisional approval for the new cops, which include a corn plant and two types of soybean.

In announcing the start of this final phase of the regulatory process, the EPA was clear in the rationale behind Dow’s product, which is known as Enlist Duo. (An EPA fact sheet is available here.)

“Weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to glyphosate-based herbicides and are posing a problem for farmers,” the agency said in a statement. “If finalized, EPA’s action provides an additional tool to reduce the spread of glyphosate resistant weeds.”

Indeed, it appears that additional tools may soon abound. According to the Center for Food Safety’s Freese, nine of the 14 applications for genetically engineered crops currently pending before U.S. regulators are for herbicide-resistant varieties.

Sixfold increase

Critics are warning of a spectrum of concerns around Dow’s application, particularly regarding the impacts of increased use of 2,4-D. This compound is already in use, with U.S. farmers currently using around 26 million pounds per year.

Yet according to the USDA’s own estimates, this usage would likely jump by more than sixfold following the approval of Enlist Duo, perhaps resulting in some 176 million pounds used per year. That would constitute higher U.S. use than any pesticide other than glyphosate.

Even at the comparably low usage of 2,4-D of recent years, worrying health effects are already being seen. According to public health advocates, 2,4-D has been linked to increases in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease, as well as heightened risk of birth defects among the children of farm workers who apply 2,4-D.

“The herbicide itself is in various ways more toxic than glyphosate, leading to cancer, lower sperm counts, liver disease and other problems. And it’s still contaminated with dioxins,” Paul Achitoff, an attorney with Earthjustice, a legal advocacy group, told IPS.

“Remarkably, you have government regulators openly admitting that, due to previous deregulations, you already have 60 million acres of glyphosate resistance, and now they want to address this by increasing the use of a toxic chemical. And so far, Congress has just yawned!”

Impact could also be significant for both nearby agriculture and environmental systems. 2,4-D has been shown to be highly volatile, tending to drift easily on the wind or to enter groundwater via runoff.

Given that the compound is specifically designed to be lethal to any broad-leafed plant, the impact of a sixfold increase in the use of 2,4-D would likely be significant. The EPA and the National Marine Fisheries Service have both found that the even relatively low use of 2,4-D of recent years is likely already having a negative impact on endangered species.

Agricultural crossroads

In a public letter released earlier this year, 144 “farm, food, health, public interest, consumer, fisheries, and environmental organizations” called on the federal government to reject the Dow proposal, warning that U.S. agriculture is at a “crossroads”.

“One path leads to more intensive use of old and toxic pesticides, litigious disputes in farm country over drift-related crop injury, still less crop diversity, increasingly intractable weeds, and sharply rising farmer production costs,” the letter stated. “This is the path American agriculture will take with approval of Dow’s 2,4-D corn, soybeans and the host of other new herbicide-resistant crops in the pipeline.”

Yet the implications of the biotechnology revolution in agriculture go well beyond the United States. Although genetically engineered crops first took root in the U.S., this approach has since spread across the globe, in developing and developed countries alike – though the U.S. regulatory system continues to be more lax on the issue than in other countries.

At times these new technologies are contextualised as an important opportunity to increase yields, particularly in adverse environments, and thus to combat hunger and strengthen food security. But the Center for Food Safety’s Freese says this is whitewash.

“The rhetoric is about biotech feeding the world, but really it has no place in developing countries. Most poor farmers can’t afford this type of product in the first place,” he notes.

“Biotech is not a humanitarian endeavour. It’s about promoting pesticide use by industrial farmers in developed countries.”

Freese says his office will likely push the EPA to extend its public comment period for Enlist Duo, given what he dubs the significance of the regulator’s decision. Dow is currently hoping to have its new crops in the ground by next year.

Troops at the entrance to the construction site where Monsanto is building a factory in Malvinas Argentinas. Credit: Screen capture from a video on the Acampe protesters’ Facebook page

By Fabiana Frayssinet
MALVINAS ARGENTINAS, Córdoba, Argentina , Dec 2 2013 (IPS)

The people of this working-class suburb of Córdoba in Argentina’s central farming belt stoically put up with the spraying of the weed-killer glyphosate on the fields surrounding their neighbourhood. But the last straw was when U.S. biotech giant Monsanto showed up to build a seed plant.

The creator of glyphosate, whose trademark is Roundup, and one of the world’s leading producers of genetically modified seeds, Monsanto is building one of its biggest plants to process transgenic corn seed in Malvinas Argentinas, this poor community of 15,000 people 17 km east of the capital of the province of Córdoba.

The plant was to begin operating in March 2014. But construction work was brought to a halt in October by protests and legal action by local residents, who have been blocking the entrance to the site since Sept. 18.

On the morning of Saturday Nov. 30, troops arrived at the plant, as seen in this video posted on Facebook, and escorted several trucks out of the construction site. The trucks had forced their way past the roadblock on Thursday Nov. 28, when members of the construction union stormed into the camp set up by local residents, with the aim of breaking the blockade. More than 20 people were injured in the clash.

The protesters don’t like to describe themselves as environmentalists, and do not identify with any specific political party. Most of them are women.

In Malvinas Argentinas, one of the poorest districts in the province, everyone knows someone with respiratory problems or allergic reactions that coincide with the spraying of fields around Córdoba, one of the biggest producers of transgenic soy in this South American country, which is the world’s third largest producer of soy.

Doctors have also reported a rise in cases of cancer and birth defects.

But the final stroke was Monsanto’s plans for a local seed plant.

“I’m participating because I’m afraid of illness and death,” María Torres, a local resident, told Tierramérica*. “My son is already sick, and if Monsanto comes things will get worse,” she added, in the midst of a protest that this reporter accompanied in mid-November.

Her 13-year-old son was at home, with sinusitis and a nosebleed. “In Malvinas, a lot of people have the same symptoms,” she said.

A boy taking part in the march from the Malvinas Argentinas central square to the construction site where Monsanto is trying to build a seed plant. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

Most of the spraying is done with Monsanto’s Roundup glyphosate-based weed-killer.
According to the University Network for Environment and Health – Physicians in Fumigated Towns, nearly 22 million hectares of soy, corn and other transgenic crops are sprayed in 12 of Argentina’s 23 provinces, whose towns are homes to some 12 million of the country’s nearly 42 million people.

Eli Leiria was also in the protest march. She is suffering from problems like weight loss. Doctors found glyphosate in her blood. “They say it’s as if a tornado had hit my body,” she said.

Biologist Raúl Montenegro of the National University of Córdoba, who won the Right Livelihood Award or Alternative Nobel Prize in 2004, explained to Tierramérica that there was no official monitoring of morbidity and mortality to determine whether the growing health problems observed by doctors are the effect of pesticides.

Nor are there adequate controls of pesticide levels in the blood, or environmental monitoring to detect traces in water tanks, for example, added Montenegro, president of the Environment Defence Foundation (FUNAM).

“That makes Argentina, and Brazil too, a paradise” for companies like Monsanto, he said.

The state agencies that authorise the use of pesticides base their decisions “mainly on technical reports and data from the companies themselves,” he said.

In 2009, Argentine President Cristina Fernández created the National Commission for Research on Agrochemicals, to study, prevent and treat their effects on human health and the environment.

But Argentina is also a “paradise” for transgenic crops, whose authorisation depends on “technical information mainly provided by the biotechnology corporations,” Montenegro said.

A plant that produces genetically modified seeds “is not a bread factory…they make poison,” said schoolteacher Matías Marizza of the Malvinas Assembly Fighting for Life.

Montenegro complained that the Córdoba Secretariat of the Environment authorised construction of the plant without taking into account studies by an independent interdisciplinary commission.

In the case of transgenic crops, there are “external pesticides,” like the ones that are sprayed on the fields, and pesticides “that come from inside the seeds,” such as the Cry1Ab protein in Monsanto’s MON810 GM maize, said Montenegro.

Each MON810 corn seed contains between 190 and 390 ng/g of the protein, whose impacts on health and biodiversity are not clear.

“In Canada it was found that pregnant and non-pregnant women had insecticide protein in their blood,” added the biologist, saying this runs counter to Monsanto’s claim that the proteins are degraded in the digestive tract.

According to a study by the University Network, the seeds to be processed by the plant in Malvinas Argentinas will be impregnated with substances such as propoxur, deltamethrin, pirimiphos ethyl, trifloxystrobin, ipconazole, metalaxyl and especially clothianidin, an insecticide banned by the European Union.

For now, the Monsanto plant construction site is blocked by five camps, where men and women – some there with their children – take turns keeping the trucks out.

Daniela Pérez, a mother of five, told Tierramérica that “this was a quiet town,” where people barely complained about problems like the lack of paved roads.

“Now what is at stake is the health of the children,” she said. “We feel so impotent…there is no one defending us.”

Soledad Escobar has four children who attend a school located next to the lot where the plant is being built.

“I’m worried about the silos and the chemical products they use,” she said. “Because of the changes in the climate, it’s now windy year-round in Córdoba and the school is right next door – I live across the street.”

Another protester, Beba Figueroa, said “What the TV and newspapers are saying, that there are political parties involved in this, isn’t true…most of us are mothers who are scared for our children.”

The demonstrators said many local residents were not taking part out of fear of losing their municipal jobs and the social assistance they receive from the government.

The protest that Tierramérica accompanied from the town square to the camps had a festive atmosphere, with colourful murga musical theatre groups, typical of the Argentine and Uruguayan carnival – a sharp contrast with the tension and violent clashes that would break out a few days later.

Like other people in this impoverished district, Matías Mansilla, his wife and their baby came out to the doorway of their humble home to watch the “carnival for life”. Mansilla didn’t take part, but he said he supports the cause “because of the illnesses that have appeared.”

A survey by two universities and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) found that 87 percent of respondents in Malvinas Argentinas wanted a plebiscite to be held, to let voters decide whether the Monsanto plant should be built, while 58 percent were opposed to the factory.

Neither the provincial government nor the company responded to Tierramérica’s request for an interview.

On its website, Monsanto claims it is committed to “sustainable agriculture.” A communiqué issued in September stated that the company had the “necessary permits” from the local authorities in Malvinas Argentinas for the construction of the plant, and that the environmental impact assessment was being studied by the provincial government.

Monsanto complained about “dirty campaigns that manipulate the technical data to generate fear…and lies, in the name of environmentalism…that mask spurious interests.”

In April, the provincial high court dismissed a request for protective measures, presented by local residents in an attempt to block construction of the plant.

In the last few months, the police have cracked down on the protesters on several occasions. The demonstrators have also received threats.

Malvinas Argentinas forms part of a growing global movement against Monsanto. The protests in this district have drawn up to 8,000 people, Marizza said. And it’s no wonder, he added: “The monster is right on top of us.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Alfalfa is the fourth-widest grown crop in the United States. Credit: Public domain

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Sep 13 2013 (IPS)

With state and federal government agencies investigating a U.S. farmer’s complaint that his alfalfa crop may have been contaminated by a genetically modified strain, consumer rights groups are suggesting that such reports were inevitable.

The incident comes just months after similar allegations were made regarding genetically engineered (GE) wheat, a report that is still under investigation. While several strains of GE alfalfa have been approved for commercial use – unlike the modified wheat – the implications of any proven contamination could still be far-reaching.“We did everything we could to prevent this from happening and unfortunately the government and industry went ahead, and this is now the result." -- George Kimbrell of the Centre for Food Safety

In accounts that were publicly confirmed on Wednesday, a farmer in Washington state told government officials in late August that his alfalfa crop had been rejected for export after it was found to include a genetic modification that made it resistant to certain herbicides. A spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Agriculture told IPS that results of a state-level investigation could be ready by Friday.

While it is unclear which organisation carried out the original testing or how any contamination may have taken place, several countries refuse to allow the import of GE products. That has led some exporters to refuse to deal with GE crops entirely.

Alfalfa is the fourth-widest grown crop in the United States, according to U.S. government figures, with exports alone valued at nearly 1.3 billion dollars last year. Following years of debate and litigation, in 2011 federal U.S. regulators allowed the largely unfettered production of GE alfalfa, though the issue remains contentious.

“Based on both the government’s and industry’s negligence, this type of contamination was an inevitability – we vigorously opposed the original approval, and litigated whether it was lawful for eight years,” George Kimbrell, an attorney with the Centre for Food Safety (CFS), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“We did everything we could to prevent this from happening and unfortunately the government and industry went ahead, and this is now the result. This is the beginning, and I think you’ll see these types of reports happening more and more frequently.”

Administration about-face

Starting in 2006, Kimbrell and CFS fought a series of cases against the agribusiness company Monsanto over whether U.S. regulators should be allowed to plant GE alfalfa. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ban on such crops, stating that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) failed to take into account environmental risks.

That decision prompted a USDA review that found that GE alfalfa genes “could be found” in non-GE alfalfa “at low levels”, and noted that the commercialisation of GE alfalfa would result in greater use of herbicides.

“In December 2010, the Obama administration proposed limiting GE alfalfa to restricted planting zones to prevent contamination; however, in January 2011, under tremendous industry pressure, the [USDA] did a complete about-face and again approved the crop without protections,” according to CFS.

“The administration relied heavily on industry assurances that its ‘best practices’ would prevent GE contamination from occurring, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.”

While Monsanto seeds were implicated in the GE wheat contamination earlier this year (though the company has said it was sabotaged), its products are not involved in the Washington reports, according to a spokesperson.

“The farmer was growing alfalfa purchased from another seed company, not Monsanto seed … [That company] offers GM, conventional and organic alfalfa seed products for sale,” Thomas Helscher, a Monsanto representative, said in an e-mail to IPS.

Helscher also notes that the industry allows multiple levels of purity in crop seeds, while it is not yet clear which seeds the Washington farmer was using.

“Varietal purity standards followed by the alfalfa seed industry allow for low level presence of impurities, including GM traits, in conventional alfalfa seed,” he says. “If a grower is growing alfalfa for sensitive markets and wants specialized, GM-free alfalfa, they can purchase [those varieties].”

On Thursday, a USDA spokesperson confirmed to IPS that the agency was working with Washington state to gather information on the alfalfa findings. Meanwhile, the agency is continuing to examine the report, from earlier this year, of possible contamination of non-GE wheat in neighbouring Oregon.

That news prompted at least two countries to temporarily halt U.S. wheat exports. The report was particularly worrying for both government regulators and the biotech industry because GE wheat has never been cleared for commercial use, and any contamination would have come from test fields grown in the area a decade ago.

Yet if that were true, it would vindicate a longstanding concern on the part of environmentalists that accidental cross-pollination between GE and non-GE crops was largely inevitable.

Food concerns

Such concerns have been particularly strong with regard to alfalfa, a perennial, bee-pollinated crop – characteristics that some say increase the likelihood of cross-breeding. Further, because alfalfa is a prime constituent of cattle fodder across the country, the potential for GE contamination worries the fast-growing organic dairy sector.

Indeed, Washington state will soon be voting on a referendum to require the labelling of GE foods, part of a mounting national campaign. Major agribusiness companies, including Monsanto, are reportedly spending millions of dollars to counter that initiative.

Although relatively little is known about U.S. public opinion on the broader agricultural applications of GE products, on food sources reactions are fairly clear. According a 2010 poll, just one in five people in the United States feel that genetically modified foods are safe, while a recent public comment period on whether the U.S. government should approve GE salmon garnered more than 1.8 million responses.

Such findings appear to be in line with public sentiment in other countries, too. Consumers in the European Union have been repeatedly found to oppose genetically modified crops, for instance, and E.U. countries have been at the forefront of requiring the labelling of foods with GE ingredients.

While legislative action on this issue has lagged in most developing countries, civil society opposition has been widely documented. Late last year, Peru and Kenya both imposed bans on the import of genetically modified foods, while Nigeria was reportedly considering following suit, citing lack of scientific consensus on the long-term impact of GE materials.

In April, a decades-long push to require the labelling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients in the United States received a significant boost, when bipartisan bills on the issue were simultaneously proposed in the House and Senate. If the bills pass, the United States would join 64 other countries that have already put in place similar laws or regulations.

Zanmi Agrikol farm/Friends of Agriculture, in Haiti's Bas-Plateau Central. Credit: Wadner Pierre/IPS

By Jared Metzker
WASHINGTON, Aug 14 2013 (IPS)

Work by the Group of 4 (G4) union of Haitian peasant organisations, along with assistance from the Dessalines Brigade –  South American peasant leaders and agroecology experts supported by La Via Campesina – has been singled out for promoting “good farming practices and advocat[ing] for peasant farmers” in Haiti.

The two network organisations, it was announced Tuesday, will be awarded the 2013 Food Sovereignty Prize, an annual award given to groups that promote a more democratic, community-based food system.

The G4 alliance represents over a quarter-million Haitians. Its relationship with the South American peasant leadership is intended “to rebuild Haiti’s environment, promote wealth and end poverty” in that country, which continues to feel the devastating effects of the major earthquake that struck the island in 2010.

“We wanted to honour that relationship,” Charity Hicks, of the Detroit Food Justice Task Force, one of the groups behind the Food Sovereignty Prize, told IPS, referring to the partnership between G4 and Via Campesina.

Hicks’ organisation is just one member of the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA), the group offering the award. USFSA aims to “end poverty, rebuild local food economies, and assert democratic control over the food system”, as well as to connect “local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty”.

Hicks lauds the partnership between the Haitian peasant union and the South American groups as an example of food sovereignty organisations from different regions “sharing knowledge and skills, respecting ecologies and creating food democracy”.

Food democracy, she explains, refers to “bottom-up, communal and cultural approaches to deal with hunger and poverty.”

In addition, the G4 union stood out for a decision made in 2010 by one of its member groups, the Peasant Movement of Papaye, to reject a substantial donation of hybrid seeds by U.S. mega-producer Monsanto following the earthquake.

“Denying the [Monsanto] seeds represented significant opposition to what the corporate food system is doing by trying to control our food,” Lisa Griffith, of the National Family Farm Coalition, another member group of the USFSA, told IPS.

The opposition to Monsanto was especially important in the decision to award G4, Griffith says, because the Food Sovereignty Prize acts as an alternative to the World Food Prize. That annual award was given this year to, among others, Robert Fraley, a high-ranking Monsanto executive.

The World Food Prize, according to its website, is the foremost international food award, intended to reward “the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.”

According to Hicks, however, there is reason to question the merits of the prize.

“The World Food Prize represents a way for corporations to give themselves awards for the notion of using technology in order to feed the world,” she says.

Indeed, one of the many corporate sponsors behind the prize is Monsanto itself.

On the other hand, food sovereignty groups, according to Griffith, offer an important alternative to the corporate producers because they have “a much stronger understanding of what their communities want to produce and want to eat.

“These communities don’t need to be taken over by corporations who profess to know better about what [the communities] want,” Griffith says.

Hicks adds that, counter to the values of the corporate food system, food sovereignty “affirms peoples’ democratic right to food, restores their traditional relationship with food and the environment and rejects the commodification of nature.”

Constitutional aim

Along with the announcement of the G4 as the winner of this year’s award, the prize also lauded the work of three additional nominees for their work in promoting the values of food sovereignty.

The Basque Country Peasants’ Solidarity (EHNE), which was one of the groups responsible for the founding of Via Campesina, represents 6,000 members in the Basque region. It received mention for, among other things, its work with young farmers.

The National Coordination of Peasant Organisations of Mali, with around 2.5 million members, was also recognised for its advocacy work in support of democratic agricultural policies. In part due to its efforts, Hicks says Mali is now one of the first countries to have enshrined food sovereignty in its national constitution.

Finally, the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective (TNWC) stood out for its work empowering women in the South Indian state.

“Through the [TNWC], 100,000 marginalised women are organised, many in unofficial worker unions or small collective farms, to strengthen their food sovereignty and thus their broader power,” the USFSA noted in a statement.

Following on Tuesday’s announcements, a formal awarding ceremony for the Food Sovereignty Prize will be held on October 15 at the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of the American Indian, in New York City. Representatives of each of the four groups will be flown in and will accept modest monetary gifts on behalf of their organisations.

The venue, Hicks says, was chosen for symbolic reasons, in order to “honour indigenous communities worldwide”.

Critics of GM crops are opposed to monoculture in Argentina. Credit: Bigstock

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 11 2013 (IPS)

The debate over the reform of Argentina’s seed law has pitted transnational corporations that make transgenic seeds against social and rural organisations and academics opposed to the expansion of monoculture in defence of biodiversity and food security.

Over a year ago, the agriculture ministry said it would present a bill to overhaul a 1973 law on seeds that was modified several times to accommodate the expansion of monoculture and genetically modified seeds since the 1990s. GM soy is now Argentina’s chief export.

But the ministry has not yet introduced a bill, although it has two drafts. Argentina’s seeds association, which represents biotech companies, supports the ministry’s efforts to draw up a new law.

However, the proposed reform has drawn criticism from those who see it as an attempt to restrict farmers from saving or selling their own seeds for further planting.

The companies argue that the world requires higher crop yields per hectare to meet the growing demand for food. They also say a law to regulate and control the market for seeds would guarantee the recovery of the investment made in research and development of GM seeds.

But those opposed to the expansion of GM crops say they undermine biodiversity, increase agriculture’s vulnerability to climate change, and threaten the survival of rural families, who carry out the important task of selecting and storing the best seeds for replanting.

In Argentina, the world’s third-largest producer of soy, around 98 percent of the crop is Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, which is resistant to the company’s own glyphosate herbicide.

In addition, 80 percent of the maize grown in Argentina is transgenic.

The U.S. biotech giant plans to build a new plant to produce GM maize seed in the central Argentine province of Córdoba in 2014, which will produce 60,000 tons of seed a year.

The idea, the company says on its web site, is to contribute to the goal of doubling food production by 2050. But alongside that pledge, Monsanto plans to step up control over the seeds it produces.

Carlos Carballo, professor of food sovereignty in the Agronomy Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires, said the expansion of GM seeds threatens the diversity of native seeds that are adapted to the soil and climate conditions of each region.

“Seeds aren’t merchandise; they are part of humanity’s heritage,” Carballo told IPS.

The Argentine government’s plan for bolstering food production foresees the continued expansion of GM soy and corn monoculture, which will lead to “a mass expulsion of small farmers” from the countryside, he said.

Land conflicts are already a reality in Argentina. A study by the agriculture ministry and the National University of San Martín reported in 2012 that there were 830 disputes involving 60,000 families, mainly subsistence farmers.

The number of conflicts increased as the agricultural frontier expanded, led by GM crops. The problem is that many poor families do not have legal title to their land, even though it may have been in the family for generations.

Companies force farmers to sign contracts

Carballo pointed out that in 2012, Monsanto announced that it would not sell any more seeds to producers who had not signed contracts allowing the firm to oversee their use.

Just a few months after that announcement, Monsanto reported that between 70 and 80 percent of soy producers had signed the contract.

Under the agreement, producers not only pay royalties for planting the seeds but also promise not to save Roundup Ready seeds to replant, under threat of legal action.

Monsanto, the biggest producer of GM crops in Argentina, was largely behind the expansion of transgenic soy in the 1990s, with its initial strategy of not insisting on the payment of royalties, agronomist Javier Souza, Latin America regional coordinator of the Pesticide Action Network, told IPS.

“That allowed it to expand to all of the countries of the Southern Cone” of Latin America, said the academic. Monsanto is now responsible for 47 percent of the soy and 28 percent of the maize sold worldwide, according to the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).

The strategy now is to force farmers to sign the contracts. “The producers have no choice, nor can they reuse the seeds,” Souza said.

GM crops threaten native seeds

He also said that in the northern province of Salta, the use of GM soy is spreading in small rural communities, threatening the survival of native seeds.

“We need a law that promotes respect for the production methods of communities that preserve, improve, breed and trade seeds,” he said.

The movement opposed to GM seeds suggests that Argentina could follow the model of the seed laws of Brazil or Bolivia, where GM crops are allowed but native seeds are protected and their use is promoted.

Carballo said that with support from government or from international NGOs, in Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru there are “seed guardians” who select and protect seeds in seed banks that are open to the public.

Argentina also has local programmes for seed protection, like the one that has been operating for two decades in the northeastern province of Misiones.

Through the native seeds programme, the provincial and national governments provide technical support and financing for the selection, preservation and breeding of seed varieties.

“High quality seeds are produced there, which the state later purchases and distributes, because maize is the basis of production of proteins for small rural economies that grow barnyard fowl and hogs,” Carballo said.

“This model foments rural employment and improves the quality of food,” he added.

He said the case of Misiones shows that there are low-cost alternatives for preserving native seeds…and for doing so within a legal framework.

Environmental safety groups are stepping up efforts to prevent a reportedly dangerous yet widely used herbicide from being sold in the United States, even as the country’s primary environmental regulator is considering increasing the amount of the herbicide allowed in the U.S. food supply.

The agricultural giant Monsanto has for years relied on its flagship product, a weed-killer known as Roundup. The primary ingredient in Roundup is an herbicide called glyphosate, which Monsanto has used to selectively kill weeds while allowing genetically modified versions of sugarcane, corn, soy and wheat crops to grow.“Part of the problem is that there is no ethical way to prove that [glyphosate] is as toxic as it is.” -- Sayer Ji of GreenMedInfo

“We are increasingly seeing more and more samples of surface water coming up with residues [of glyphosate], and this is affecting frogs that live there,” Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group, told IPS. “Potatoes and carrots are also picking it up in the soil – there are multiple routes of exposure.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal regulatory agency, is currently preparing to increase the allowable amount of glyphosate in crops like carrots, sweet potatoes and mustard seeds. A public comment period on the proposal to do so ends Monday night, and the EPA has reportedly already received some 9,000 comments.

The new EPA regulation would allow “oilseed” crops such as flax, canola and soybean oil to contain glyphosate at levels up to 40 parts per million (ppm), up from 20 ppm, which is over 100,000 times the concentration needed to cause cancer according to a recent study. It also raises the allowable glyphosate contamination level for food crops such as potatoes from 200 ppm to 6,000 ppm.

Glyphosate has previously been shown to be an “endocrine disruptor”, which the National Institutes of Health has shown to have long-term effects on reproductive health. They can be very dangerous at low levels, thus restricting the amount allowed will not be effective.

“The EPA is failing to protect human health and the environment by neglecting to regulate the excessive use of herbicides,” a current Food & Water Watch petition states. “Instead, it is just changing its own rules to allow the irresponsible and potentially dangerous applications continue.”

Monsanto, meanwhile, claims glyphosate is safe because it only acts on a biological process that is present in plants, not animals.

“We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has,” Jerry Stainer, Monsanto’s executive vice president of sustainability, has stated in the past. “It has been very, very extensively studied.”

Yet new research says glyphosate interferes with gut bacteria, which can disrupt immunity and vitamin synthesis.

Indeed, according to EPA analysts, the consequences linked to exposure to the chemical include lung congestion and shortness of breath. Further, according to a study published in April, scientists have linked exposure to glyphosate to gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility and cancer.

“Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,” the study states.

“Part of the problem is that there is no ethical way to prove that [glyphosate] is as toxic as it is,” Sayer Ji, director of GreenMedInfo, an advocacy group, told IPS. “Yet meanwhile, no new research is proving it’s safer, but rather the opposite. I think the EPA is really damaging its credibility.”

According to Lovera, the EPA tends to be very slow in taking new studies into account. (The EPA was unable to provide comment for this story before deadline.)

180 million pounds

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 180 million pounds of glyphosate are applied to U.S. soil annually. Herbicide use has increased by 26 percent since 2001, according Food & Water Watch.

Instead of pushing more environmentally friendly techniques to combat weeds – such as varying crops from year to year or using crop covers – biotech companies have focused on inventing genetically engineered crops  that can withstand the use of Roundup and other herbicides.

Yet the impacts of this massively increased use of chemical inputs on environmental systems and human communities are only slowly being understood.

Scientists have repeatedly found that the numbers of migrating monarch butterflies, for instance, are today at their lowest point in decades. Environmental advocacy groups say this is because milkweed plants – the only plant on which these butterflies lay their eggs – are being killed off by these herbicides.

Nor are plants and animals the only ones reportedly being affected by this increased use of glyphosate.

In its Farm Family Exposure Study, GreenMedInfo looked at the glyphosate concentration in the urine of 48 farmers, their spouses and 79 of their children on the day before, the day of, and for three days after a glyphosate application on their farms.

Of the farmers studied, 60 percent had detectable levels of the chemical the day of the application. So too did four percent of their spouses and 12 percent of their children.

“For consumers in the United States, the best way to get around this is to look for organic labels on food, because they are not allowed to use Roundup,” Lovera told IPS. “That’s one of the biggest distinctions between conventional and organic products.”

By Johan Galtung
ALFAZ, Spain, Jun 18 2013 (IPS)

The United States and Colombia are the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas.

Both have good reasons: Colombia has witnessed the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country: from 1949, with some interruptions, then on again from 1964 with the notorious guerilla group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

The U.S., with its conviction that evil is lurking around every corner, domestic and global, believes it better have the arms to handle those bad guys.

Both countries have among the highest rates of structural violence, and the most unequal distributions of economic wealth, in the world.

There is a difference, though: one country submits its problem to third party mediation, of all places in Havana, facilitated by Cuba and Norway; the other submits its problem to nobody, nor does anyone seem to offer their services.

Colombia admits openly to the world that it does not have sufficient capacity for self-regulation; from the U.S. no such admission has been forthcoming.

Recently there was news from Havana: a breakthrough in the peace negotiations about a rather basic economic issue: land, and land reform – a redistribution of land, and of better land, to small impoverished peasants.

There are four other problems on the agenda: political participation (the problem being real democracy), ceasefire, drugs, and the rights of the victims and the bereaved in a country where four million have been displaced and thousands kidnapped and killed.

Reasons to celebrate? Wait. The class differences in a country ruled by the triumvirate of landowners, the military and clerics (like three brothers in many families – the Iberian heritage) force upon us a sad prediction: there will be one more military coup in the chain of coups, supported by the Church.

Let us not pray. Let us hope for disarmament of the FARC and the other guerrillas (particularly the reactionary paramilitary) and control of the army, lest we end up with Nepal: disarmament to the left, not centre-right.

To produce food, not only land, but also water, seeds, manure and some technology are needed. Water and seeds may become privatised – by Monsanto – so where does the credit to buy these inputs come from? And at what price?

What’s needed is collective, cooperative farming on communal land with direct democracy for decisions, not corruptible multi-party national elections. And can farming compete with drug commissions when drugs change hands until finally traveling via submarines to the U.S.? Or on the long road to the Mexican border?

Small farms cannot compete; cooperatives would do better. Well, let’s hope.

Expand the zones of peace, have them intersect, and aim at all of huge Colombia.

The U.S.: On May 23, President Barack Obama concluded that he should pull back the drones, and close the Guantanamo prison. Does he have the guts to do so, by executive orders, using vetoes?

There will be no military coup in the U.S. There are permanent, structural links between the Pentagon, Congress, the military industry and the media (owned by the former, and for whom news of peace is bad news) designed to keep the war industry going.

That industry has one major purpose: to stamp out any initiative to eliminate the special status of the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency” – like by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, by Iran, now by BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) – so that the U.S. can pay by printing money, and even get the naive to buy U.S. bonds, meaning lending the U.S. petro-dollars or China dollars.

Alas, the U.S.’ efforts are self-defeating. The more wars against terror for U.S. security, the more insecurity and terrorism; the more wars to save the dollar, the closer the collapse of the currency of that bankrupt country: by inflation, by stock exchange crashes, by serving debts rather than people.

The synergy of these three factors will catch up with the economy. In the meantime Monsanto is at work, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other lobbies threatening anyone whose voting is not to their liking that they will not be reelected.

The finance industry is at work forcing the administration to withdraw one step behind the other from the tiny measures introduced after the Grand Repression to control the finance industry.

The U.S. Supreme Court did its part of the job granting money to politicians under “freedom of expression.”

And Obama did his job, offering to cut Social Security entitlements in return for some compromise with Republicans, the average retirement package in the U.S. now being only 40 percent of a salary as opposed to 70 percent in developed countries.

Montesquieu’s plan of separating legislative, executive and judiciary power so that they check each other does not work. In the U.S. today all three powers are on the same course set by the finance industry, to which the dollar status is key.

Politicians are bought and cowed and the president once again betrays those who elected him. Democracy does not work. The U.S. blessing – the Occupy Movement – was itself occupied: by armies of FBI agents.

All of this and worse was Colombia’s fate; the answer was FARC, armed revolt. Will there be a similar armed revolt in the U.S., given that the guns are well distributed?

For Anglo-American global direct violence, yes. As the suspected Boston bombers said, an attack on one Muslim is an attack on all Muslims, an eye for an eye – except when it comes to domestic structural violence.

Let us hope for the revival of Montesquieu and democracy or, if not, submission to outside mediation.

Excerpt:

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presents plants to schoolchildren as part of the campaign "Gardens of Hope". Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

By Silvia Giannelli
FLORENCE, May 20 2013 (IPS)

As the global agricultural sector is faced with ever-greater challenges, the question of how to reform and improve the sector is a controversial and difficult one. So Terra Futura, a three-day exhibition and conference on agricultural good practises held annually in Florence, brought the debate back to its roots: seeds.

Terra Futura (Future Earth) has been held for ten years as a network for institutions, associations and civil society, which gather in Florence and exchange ideas and experiences for alternative and sustainable environmental, economical and social development.

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presented a series of initiatives to defend the survival of local and traditional seeds. The initiatives connected land, food sovereignty, biodiversity and environment.

Shiva presented the “law of the seed”, a campaign targeting intellectual property and patents claimed by agribusiness giants. The project aims to reaffirm the centrality of biological and natural rules against the logic of the agribusiness sector, which relies on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), monocultures and intensive agriculture.

“What we intend to achieve is to overturn the logic behind the criminalisation of ordinary seeds and protect the right of farmers to breed their own seeds,” Shiva told IPS.

Yet the current trend seems to be running in the opposite direction, with multinational companies trying to impose the use of patented, genetically modified seeds, with disastrous consequences for local farmers, especially in the third world.

“We have already seen what the entry of Monsanto [a multinational company in agricultural biotechnology and leader of genetically engineered seeds], has done to the cotton sector in India,” Shiva explained.

She added that “95 percent of cotton seed is currently owned and controlled by Monsanto, causing farmers to get into deep dept to pay the royalties”.

Staving off GMOs

According to Beppe Croce, the head of the non-food agriculture section of Legambiente, Italy’s biggest environmental organisation, Europe has managed so far to keep the cultivation of GMOs outside its borders. “From a legislative point of view, the local production is protected,” he said.

The problem lies instead in what European countries import from abroad, as Croce explained to IPS. “Most of our animal feed is integrated with imported products, such as soy and maize. More than half of the total maize cultivated in the world is transgenic,” he said. “This is why we need to strengthen and uniform the tracking system of imported products throughout Europe.”

Giovanni Fabris, national coordinator of Altragricoltura, a national farmers’ movement for food sovereignty, is similarly critical of Europe’s importation policies. During a workshop on access to land in Italian agriculture, he noted, “Europe is focusing on guaranteeing its citizens with the cheapest food possible, regardless of where it comes from.”

According to Fabris, this policy is undermining the production system of countries like Italy, which “have to face the competition of agroindustrial systems outside Europe that are obviously cheaper than ours”.

Under such circumstances, the odds of GMO cultivation not entering Europe seem all but impossible.

“The argument is always the same: the population is growing and we need GMOs to meet the future food demand,” Croce pointed out. “The truth is that production cannot be boosted indiscriminately everywhere, and most of all, it does not need to be done via GM techniques.”

But the lobbying efforts of agribusiness companies are finding new ways of breaking through. On May 6, the European Commission drafted legislation that prevents farmers from producing their own seeds.

“This draft is an example of criminalising the alternative to GMO,” Shiva told IPS. “They would like only patented seeds, all royalties flowing, farmers having no freedom to choose what to grow and consumers having no freedom to choose what to eat.”

People power

But citizens are rediscovering the value of good food, as demonstrated by phenomena and movements such as Slow Food, solidarity-based purchasing groups, and urban gardens. After a half-century of industry control, “people are experimenting [with] new solutions to have more control [over] what they eat,” Shiva said.

Another initiative, “Seeds of Future, Gardens of Hope”, is moving in the same direction. It is being promoted by Shiva’s non-profit organisation, Navdanya International. Through it, children in Florence’s primary schools are given plants of local species to grow in their gardens.

“We are not just talking about education. We are talking about them being the custodian,” Shiva told IPS.

“But everyone is a child in this matter,” she added. “Farmers have been made into children in the sense that they have been made to forget they are savers and breeders of seeds. Consumers have been made to forget that food begins with seed. So, in a way, this it is education for all, education for life.”

Native varieties of maize, like these drying in San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the southern state of Chiapas, are key to preserving crop diversity. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 8 2013 (IPS)

In the 2011 action-thriller “Unknown”, scientists are persecuted by the biotech industry because they plan the open release of a drought- and pest-resistant strain of maize that could help eradicate world hunger.

There are certain parallels with the situation today in Mexico, the birthplace of maize, which is at the centre of the global fight to protect the crop’s diversity from the onslaught of genetically modified varieties.

“It’s the first time in history that one of the most important harvests in the world is threatened in its centre of diversity,” Pat Mooney, the head of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), an international NGO, told IPS.

“If we let the companies win, there will be no chance to defend them in other parts. What is happening here is of key importance for the rest of the world.”

Civil society organisations are raising their guard against the possibility that the government of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) may approve commercial cultivation of transgenic maize, a move widely condemned by environmentalists and other activists, academics, and small and medium producers due to the risks it poses.

In September, the U.S. corporations Monsanto, Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences presented six applications for commercial plantations of transgenic maize on more than two million hectares in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

Moreover, in January these companies and Syngenta presented 11 applications for pilot and experimental plots to grow transgenic corn on 622 hectares in the northern states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa and Baja California. And Monsanto has applied for an additional plantation in an unspecified area in the north of the country.

Since 2009, the Mexican government has issued 177 permits for experimental plots of transgenic maize covering an area of 2,664 hectares, according to the latest figures provided by the authorities.

But large-scale commercial release of GM maize has not yet been authorised.

“They are going to serve up transgenic maize on every table in spite of the fact that food sovereignty depends on growing native corn,” said Evangelina Robles, a member of Red en Defensa del Maíz (Maize Defence Network) which campaigns against GM corn. “As a result, we have to demand its prohibition by the state,” she told IPS.

Mexico produces 22 million tonnes of maize a year, and imports 10 million tonnes, according to the agriculture ministry. The country purchased about two million tonnes of GM maize from South Africa over the last two years, and is set to import another 150,000 tonnes.

Three million maize farmers cultivate about eight million hectares in Mexico, two million of which are devoted to family farming. White maize is the main crop for human consumption, while yellow maize, for animal feed, is largely imported.

The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy (CONEVAL) estimates the country’s annual consumption of maize at 123 kg per person, compared to a world average of 16.8 kg.

The historical link with pre-Columbian indigenous cultures gives maize a strong symbolic and cultural significance throughout Mesoamerica, the area comprising southern Mexico and Central America, where it was domesticated, producing 59 landraces or native strains and 209 varieties.

In the state of Mexico, adjacent to the capital city’s Federal District, small farmers have found their native maize to be contaminated with GM maize, according to tests carried out by students at the state Autonomous Metropolitan University.

“We swapped seeds and decided to do some tests. Now we are more careful when exchanging, and over who participates in the fair, although we still have to carry out confirmation tests,” activist Sara López, of the Red Origen Volcanes (Volcanoes Origins Network), an association of small farmers that has been organising producers’ fairs since 2010, told IPS.

Environmental, scientific and small farmers’ organisations have discovered GM contamination of native maize in Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Puebla and Oaxaca.

Contamination is “a carefully and perversely planned strategy,” according to Camila Montecinos, from the Chile office of GRAIN, an international NGO that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

Transnational food companies “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination (by wind-pollination),” said Montecinos, one of the experts participating in the preliminary hearing on transgenic contamination of native maize at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, an international opinion tribunal which opened its Mexican chapter in 2012 and will conclude with a non-binding ruling in 2014.

“When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognised and legalised,” in order to pave the way for marketing the GM seeds, to which they own the patents, she said.

Mexico’s environment minister, Juan Guerra, has said that all available scientific information will be examined before a decision is made.

But that will not be easy. The National Confederation of Campesinos (Small Farmers), one of the main internal movements in the ruling PRI, has had an agreement with Monsanto since 2007 under which the company is to “conserve” native varieties.

Meanwhile, the Peña Nieto government still has not approved regulations for the format and contents of reports on the results of releasing GM organisms, and the possible threats to the environment, biodiversity, and the health of animals, plants and fish.

“For 18 years, corporations have been unsuccessful in convincing the people that their products are good. Maize is being used as a means of political and economic control. People need maize to be alive,” the ETC Group’s Mooney said.

The transgenic seeds on the market are herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready and Bt (for the Bacillus thuringiensis gene they carry for pest resistance) versions of cotton, maize, soy and canola. While they are legally grown in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Spain, they are banned for example in China, Russia and the majority of the EU countries.

Recent studies published in the United States show that transgenic crops do not significantly increase yield per hectare, do not reduce herbicide use, and do not increase resistance to pests, in contrast to biotech industry claims.

“We are analysing what legal action to take against the new applications (to plant GM maize),” said Robles, of the Maize Defence Network.

A new act will require the USDA to issue temporary permits allowing farmers to continue planting genetically modified organisms. Credit: Peter Blanchard/CC by 2.0

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Apr 28 2013 (IPS)

Food safety advocates are outraged over revelations that U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama approved an act that includes a provision purporting to strip federal courts of the ability to prevent the spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The provision in the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue temporary permits allowing the continued planting of GMOs by farmers, even when a court rules that the agency erred in its environmental impact review of the GMOs.

The provision, which activists call the Monsanto Protection Act, is one for which the multinational corporation Monsanto has been lobbying Congress for at least a year. The legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Mar. 6, 2013 and the Senate on Mar. 21, with Obama signing the legislation five days later on Mar. 26.

Revelations of the provision, which was buried in the 587-page spending bill (HR 933, under Division A, Title VI, Section 735), have increased public awareness and interest in the issue of GMOs in the United States.

The provision states that if “a determination of non-regulated status…is or has been invalidated or vacated, the Secretary of Agriculture shall, notwithstanding any other provision of law, upon request by a farmer, grower, farm operator, or producer, immediately grant temporary permit(s) or temporary deregulation in part”.

Industry control

U.S. Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana and one of the only family farmers in Congress, spoke out against the provision on the floor on the Senate. Once again, agribusiness multinational corporations [are] putting farmers as serfs

“The United States Congress is telling the Agricultural Department that even if a court tells you that you’ve failed to follow the right process and tells you to start over, you must disregard the court’s ruling and allow the crop to be planted anyway,” Tester said.

“Not only does this ignore the constitutional idea of separation of powers, but it also lets genetically modified crops take hold across this country, even when a judge finds it violates the law,” Tester said, describing the issue as “once again, agribusiness multinational corporations putting farmers as serfs”.

Meanwhile, activists are holding Senator Barbara Milkulski, a Democrat from Maryland, partially responsible, as she was the committee chair who allowed the amendment and could have addressed the provision in Congressional hearings

In a statement, Mikulski’s spokeswoman, Rachel MacKnight, defended her. “Senator Mikulski understands the anger over this provision. She didn’t put the language in the bill and doesn’t support it either.”

“As Chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski’s first responsibility was to prevent a government shutdown. That meant she had to compromise on many of her own priorities to get a bill through the Senate that the House would pass,” MacKnight said.

Because the provision is temporary, it will likely come up for reauthorisation in September 2013, an opportunity for public opposition that activists are relishing.

“The USDA has working mechanisms in place to allow for partial deregulation for those crops,” Colin O’Neil, director of government affairs for the Centre for Food Safety, noted in an interview with IPS.

“At best, it’s unnecessary and duplicative. At worst, it takes oversight away from the USDA and puts it in the hands of the industry,” O’Neil said of the provision.

The centre has concerns about how the USDA has used temporary deregulation in the past, such as with genetically modified sugar beets. Both genetically modified alfalfa and sugar beets have been held up in court in the past over National Environmental Policy Act challenges.

“While we have argued that the USDA isn’t adequately protecting farmers and the environment, the rider will essentially prevent the USDA from safeguarding farmers and the environment because it forces the agency to comply with industry demands,” O’Neil said.

Future benefits

Monsanto has proposals for numerous GMO crops in the pipeline that could be affected by this rider.

“I think the Monsanto Protection Act and how it was passed and how it was slipped into law is just another example of how this company operates, how they manipulate our democracy, and they buy off our elected officials,” Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now, told IPS.

“This is another example of how…they choose to operate within the rules of a democratic society. They’re like the mafia, they go in and write the rules the way they want them to be,” Murphy said.

“Monsanto really did themselves a major disservice by slipping this into a continuing resolution,” he said.

Monsanto, which does derive benefit from the provision, responded in a statement, saying its critics have an “interesting narrative, worthy of a B grade movie script”.

“Virtually none of the people protesting actually read the provision itself. Those who did, found a surprise: It contains no reference to Monsanto, protection of Monsanto, or benefit to Monsanto. It does seek to protect farmers, and we supported the provision,” Monsanto wrote.

Senator Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, inserted the provision, or “rider”, into the spending bill, according to Politico. Monsanto is based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Genetically modified corn in Spain. Credit: Friends of the Earth

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

Spain has more large-scale plantations of genetically modified seeds than any other country in the European Union (EU).

Based on the number of trials conducted and the area of land planted, Spain accounts for 42 percent of all field trials of genetically modified crops in the EU, according to figures from the European Commission Joint Research Centre.

“Experimentation is being carried out on a wide scale with no knowledge of its consequences for human health, the environment and the future of agriculture,” environmentalist Liliane Spendeler, director of Friends of the Earth Spain, told Tierramérica*.

Her organisation has launched a campaign, “Únicos en Europa”, to inform the public about these crops.

Genetically modified organisms or GMOs, also known as transgenic organisms, are the result of a laboratory process of taking genes from one species of plant or animal and inserting them into another species in an attempt to obtain a desired trait or characteristic, such as resistance to pests or adverse weather conditions like drought.

There is no conclusive evidence that GMOs are harmless to human health and the environment, which has led the World Health Organization to recommend that they be studied on a case-by-case basis.

In 2012, more than 116,300 hectares of land in Spain were planted with MON810 corn, produced by the U.S.-based biotech transnational Monsanto. This was 20 percent more than in 2011, according to figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment calculated on the basis of seed sales.

Environmentalists are critical of the fact that these figures are imprecise estimates, and that there is no public registry specifying the location of these transgenic corn fields.

When certified organic crops are contaminated by genetically modified crops, the farmers lose their organic certification, but cannot sue the owners of the transgenic crops because of the lack of a registry. They cannot demand compensation for losses and damages, either, because there is no provision for this in Spanish or European legislation, explained Spendeler.

In Spain, as in the rest of the EU, only transgenic corn is authorised. Genetically modified soy and cotton are imported from Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the United States.

“Transgenic crops produced in developing countries are filling the bellies of cows and pigs in industrialised countries,” Luís Ferreirim, the head of Greenpeace Spain’s anti-GMO campaign, told Tierramérica.

According to a report from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), published Feb. 20, “From 1996 to 2011, biotech crops contributed to food security, sustainability and climate change” (sic).

A record 170.3 million hectares of transgenic crops were grown globally in 2012, up six percent from 2011, the ISAAA reports. The United States is the biggest producer, followed by Brazil.

But despite the benefits touted by their promoters, such as increased productivity and efficiency and decreased pesticide use, genetically modified seeds have been banned by a significant number of European countries, noted Ferreirim.

In Europe there are 11 countries that prohibit the use of genetically modified seeds, eight of them in the EU, following the addition of Poland in 2013. And in 2012, only Portugal, Spain, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic planted transgenic crops, he added.

A whopping 95 percent of these crops in the EU are concentrated in Spain (88 percent) and Portugal (seven percent).

The bulk of this transgenic corn is used to produce animal feed. “Given that the food pyramid has been turned upside down and there is an ever greater demand for animal protein, it ends up right on our plates,” said Ferreirim.

European legislation requires that food products be labelled if they contain GMOs, unless these account for 0.9 percent or less of the total ingredients.

The animal feed sold in Spain is a mixture of transgenic and conventional corn, which represents a serious violation of cattle farmers’ right to choose non-GMO feed for their livestock, said Spendeler.

Environmental activist Carmela San Segundo, a member of Ecologists in Action in the southern Spanish city of Málaga, stressed the “great power” wielded by the agrochemical corporations that sell genetically modified seeds.

Through the efforts of the non-governmental organisation she works with, a dozen towns in the province of Málaga have declared themselves Transgenic-Free Zones, a legal status recognised by the EU.

“It takes a lot of work, talking with community associations, farmers’ associations, members of local governments. It’s not a problem that people worry about much, because they know very little about it,” she told Tierramérica.

In Spain, the planting of transgenic corn began in 1998 as a means of confronting the economic consequences of insect invasions, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

But today there are no figures on the real incidence of the European corn borer, the crop’s main insect enemy.

“Can the use of this technology be justified without concrete figures on the losses caused by pests?” asked Ferreirim.

He explained that Monsanto’s genetically modified Bt corn does away with the need to use pesticides because its flowers produce a bacterium that is toxic to these insects.

But even though there is not always a threat of insect infestation, the corn constantly releases this gene, and after harvesting, it remains in the soil, decreasing its fertility, Ferreirim said.

“It has been shown in transgenic crops in various countries that over the long term, secondary pests appear, leading to the need to use other pesticides,” he added.

In addition, GMO field trials are not subjected to any safety controls in Spain, Ferreirem stressed.

According to a survey published in 2010 by the EU, 53 percent of Spaniards were against the splicing of genes from other species into food crops, while only 27 percent were in favour.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Local and state campaigns have become a moneyed battleground this year for corporations and special interest groups hoping to sway the results of elections for local and state offices on Nov. 6.

From California to Texas to Florida, global businesses as well as ideological organisations and extremely wealthy groups have helped channel more than 1.6 billion dollars through political action committees and into local campaigns and issues this year, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that analyses state campaign-spending reports.

Some of the cash went into campaigns of local lawmakers. Other amounts supported campaigns for judges. More than 6,000 legislators are running for election Tuesday, according to the National Council of State Legislators, with most relying on private funding.

Campaign money can be difficult to track, since states set their own campaign finance laws, and money flows in and out of state and federal political parties, political action committees and non-profits and into campaigns and issue advocacy.

“Money is access, and it definitely influences the outcomes of elections,” Judy Nadler, a government ethics expert at Santa Clara University in California, told IPS. In some states, “huge amounts of money [go] unreported and unregulated.”

This “outside spending” increased 38 percent between 2006 and 2010, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Spending by candidates increased 19 percent during that time, it found.

Large chunks of special interest money also were directed at state ballot measures, which are decided by voters in individual states. This year, 38 states have ballot measures, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

From coast to coast

A national overview of money spent per state on election campaigns and committees. Credit: National Institute on Money in State Politics/Creative Commons

Nowhere is the impact of moneyed interests more obvious than in California, where 570 million dollars have been spent leading up to Tuesday’s elections. Of that amount, 421 million dollars have gone to groups arguing for or against ballot measures, including those related to tobacco and genetically modified foods.

A California proposal to raise taxes on a package of cigarettes by one dollar was voted on and narrowly defeated earlier this year during the state’s primary election. Pro-health groups spent 18.2 million dollars advocating for the measure, but tobacco companies, including global giants Philip Morris and Reynolds, spent 46 million dollars to bolster their pro-tobacco stance through advertisements.

A measure to label genetically modified foods has pitted consumers, organic farmers and businesses, who have ponied up 8.2 million dollars, against well-armed agricultural corporations and supermarkets, which have spent 48.7 million dollars.

The biotechnology giant Monsanto has contributed 7.1 million dollars to defeat the labelling proposal, followed by Dupont (4.9 million) and Pepsico, (2.1 million), among many others.

“We have been shut down by biotech on this issue,” Grant Lundberg, CEO of Lundberg Family Farms, an organic rice grower and processor, and co-chair of the Non-GMO Project, told IPS. “They have had a big impact. They have gotten their lies out and confused people. We have limited resources.”

In Texas, where donations to this year’s candidates exceeded 113 million dollars, some individuals and businesses stood out for their especially large contributions to the electoral process.

Bob Perry, the Houston real estate mogul who helped bankroll presidential candidate Mitt Romney, mainly by donating more than 10.7 million dollars to the Super PAC Restore Our Future, is one, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a Washington NGO that analyses campaign finance reports. This year, Perry has made a mark of 2.4 million dollars on Texas politics.

More than 72.5 million dollars were dumped into Florida campaigns for 2012, where pro-business special interests figured prominently. The utility company Progress Energy gave the most money – 709,000 dollars – to candidates, about 90 percent of them Republican.

Other major corporate donors include private health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield, which gave 648,000 dollars, and the Walt Disney Company, which donated 497,000 dollars. Multi-billionaire conservative Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate, also got involved in Florida politics; he gave 250,000 dollars to the state Republican Party.

“What we shouldn’t have is corporate financing of elections. Corporations are not people. They don’t vote and should not be involved in selecting our government,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy NGO in Washington, DC.

Influential PACs

Political action committees (PACs) and political non-profits also are influencing politics in Florida, as they do in many other states.

Three Florida Supreme Court justices are at risk of being unseated by conservative groups angry about the justices’ support for President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law. According to an investigation by the Centre for Public Integrity, the attack against the judges is being waged largely by two well-funded ultra-conservative political organisations, Restore Justice 2012 and Americans for Prosperity, funded by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers. A third politics group, Defend Justice from Politics, is backing the judges.

How much money is involved in the judges’ re-election campaigns is unclear, however, due to Florida’s murky reporting requirements.

Grassroots efforts to expel money from politics are underway in a number of states, including New York. And a number of states including Arizona, Connecticut and Maine have already tightened up their campaign finance rules, mostly due to citizen efforts. A sweeping law to reform relaxed campaign finance rules in Massachusetts was passed by citizens in 1998, but was repealed by lawmakers.

Some candidates are taking matters into their own hands by refusing corporate money or in the case of one candidate running for the Massachusetts state house, refusing money altogether.

Mike Connolly, also known as No Cash Mike, told IPS that “money in the political system gets in the way of actual progress”. He added, “94 percent of the time the candidate who raises the most money wins. When a few individuals can have a profound impact on an election and on the direction of government, that really cuts against the essence of democracy.”

Soybean harvest in the U.S. state of Michigan. Credit: Public domain

By Zoha Arshad
WASHINGTON, Sep 20 2012 (IPS)

Researchers are warning that RoundUp, a popular herbicide produced by the U.S. agro-giant Monsanto and which is used heavily on U.S. corn and soybeans, cause tumours, liver and kidney failure in rodents.

The researchers, led by Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen in France, found that levels of the herbicide believed to be safe can cause mammary tumours and multiple organ damage, and in some cases led to premature deaths, in laboratory animals.

The study, the first peer-reviewed, long-term animal study of a genetically modified food, spanned two years, a relatively long period for such research. The results have been approved by CRIGEN, a group against the practice of genetically modifying organisms.

Researchers tested female and male rats, both of which reportedly developed abundant tumours when exposed to the herbicide. Most rats had two to three tumours before they died.

The study, which has been published in the peer-reviewed Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal, also shows that female rats were more at risk than the male rats, with 93 percent of the females developing tumours.

The rats were fed a diet of commercially available seeds that have been genetically modified to be tolerant of Round Up. They also drank water that had U.S. government-approved levels of RoundUp in it.

Discussing the findings with journalists on Wednesday, Seralini pointed out that these rats died before the rats in the control group, which were fed a normal diet. There was again a gender difference between the rats’ death rates, with 70 percent of female rats dying prematurely compared to 50 percent of the male rats.

These numbers were significantly higher than those of the control group, in which 20 and 30 percent of males and females, respectively, died prematurely. The livers of the males were found to have been particularly affected.

On Wednesday, Seralini called on the U.S government to take note of the study – and take action. He said he found it preposterous that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not already tested for these issues.

“It is abnormal that the FDA hasn’t requested for more tests on pesticides and the like affecting mammalian health,” Seralini said. “These results can parallel human health.”

Critics, however, are sceptical of the study, and some scientists have pointed to what they believe are statistical inaccuracies. A major criticism is a lack of data regarding the portions fed to the rats.

Some have also wondered publicly why there aren’t more human cases to back up the study’s rodent findings.

Reuters reported that Monsanto spokesman Thomas Helscher said the company would review the study, but that, “Numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies performed on biotech crops to date, including more than a hundred feeding studies, have continuously confirmed their safety, as reflected in the respective safety assessments by regulatory authorities around the world.”

Still, the study has been grist for groups in favour of labelling genetically modified food, a longstanding debate in the United States.

California Right to Know, a group that has been pushing for the labelling of such foods, is pointing to the study as proof that action must be taken. A spokesperson for the group, Stacy Malkan, claims that “this is the first available long-term study on GMO” despite the fact that such foods have been in the supply “for the better part of 20 years”.

Indeed, other countries have been quicker to take a precautionary approach. The French government has ordered an investigation into crop-growing methods in direct response to the study’s release.

In the United States, whether the FDA will take heed of the study and launch its own investigation is unclear at the moment, but pressure groups have already started urging the concerned authorities concerning these findings.

For Seralini, the matter is simple. “GMOs are problematic for human, mammalian health,” he says – and he has no qualms in drawing parallels between the rodents that were tested and the humans of which he speaks.