Saying no to soy: the Campesino struggle for sustainable agriculture in Paraguay

Bio-fuels, no matter what they are made from, are not the answer to our energy problems - the land and water use are one issue, the other issue not spoken of is their emissions... burning oil becomes toxic at various degrees (depending upon the oil) - try riding a motor cycle behind a bio-diesel vehicle and enjoy the headaches and nausea.... We are still putting toxic substances into our atmosphere... We have a great opportunity to clean up our world and move forward in a positive way as we sort out our energy sources, not create a parallel reality of disaster by different methods...

From the article:

The Agricultural Export Industry — A Poisonous Green Desert

A biologically diverse Interior Atlantic Forest once covered 85 percent of Eastern Paraguay. Intermingled with the necessary shade and fruit-bearing trees of the forest, farmers grew diverse crops and raised a variety of livestock. However, today only 5–8 percent of that forest remains. The land now resembles the rolling hills of a green desert. Brazilian industrial farmers have invaded Eastern Paraguay and bought up the much of the land, bit by bit, in order to grow monoculture crops for export. Their bounty is sold to such companies as Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge. They transform communities and strong-arm farmers to produce soy, corn, and cotton for export. Paraguay and parts of Brazil and Argentina have become “soy republics.”

Soy production has increased exponentially in recent years to keep up with worldwide demand for animal feed, as well as the ecologically bankrupt, but still thriving, agrofuel industry. Industrial soy is directed toward these markets, not human food. Today, Paraguay is the world’s fourth-largest exporter of soybeans. In 2003, five million acres of land were devoted to soy cultivation — more than double the amount ten years before that.5 Today, according to sociologist Javiera Rulli, that number is closer to thirty million acres, and is expected to continue rising exponentially.6

The expansion of the soy industry in Paraguay has occurred in tandem with the violent oppression of small farmers and indigenous communities. Farmers have been bullied into growing soy with pesticides, at the expense of their food crops, health, and subsequently their farms. Farmers who live next to the soy fields have been driven away by the chemicals, which kill their crops and animals and cause illnesses. Since the first soy boom, almost 100,000 small farmers have been evicted from their homes and fields. Countless indigenous communities have been forced to relocate. Mechanized production reorganized labor relations, as those who stayed to work in the soy fields were replaced by tractors and combines. Entire communities fled to the cities to be street vendors and live in the exploding semi-urban slums around large cities. Farmers who refuse to leave their land are targeted by hired security forces, employed by the surrounding soy growers, in hope that they will eventually sell. A simultaneous campaign of “criminalization” has allowed the soy industry to use the state security and judicial apparatus to remove and punish resistant farmers. More than a hundred campesino leaders have been assassinated, and more than two thousand others have faced trumped-up charges for their resistance to the intrusion of agribusiness.