La Repùblica Sojera. Nicole Mercurio

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA
La Repùblica Sojera: origins and consequences of the

soybean agro-export boom in Argentina
Nicole Mercurio
Graduated in International Cooperation and Development
Bologna, 2020
1
Introduction p. 3
1 Historical chronology of agro-export policy in Argentina, from its origins to Macri
1.1 The economic policy of Argentine agro-export, from the construction of the Nation-
State to the government of Menem p. 5
1.2 The 90s: the soy boom and Carlos Menem's neoliberal project p. 9
1.3 The 21st Century in Argentina: from the end of the neoliberal age to Macrism p.14
2 Case study of a foreign agro-export multinational and its infiltration process in the
Argentine political-economic context
2.1 Monsanto p.20
3 The dark side of the frontier expansion of the soy industry: environmental consequences and
rural conflict
3.1 Effects on the environment and on human, animal and land health p.28
3.2 Rural conflict and the case of the Qom Potae Napocna Navogoh community p.35
4 Regulation of soy, GMO products and glyphosate in the context of the PAC (European
common agricultural policy) and the European paradox
4.1 GMO regulation and soybean import into the EU: key points and contradictions p.40
4.2 The European outsourcing of environmental and social damage p.43
Conclusions p.49
Bibliographic references p.5
2
Introduction.
The expansion of the agricultural frontier suitable for export, primarily of soybeans, is a
phenomenon that in the last thirty years has involved, in different ways and with distinct
implications, in most of the world's territories.
This phenomenon has had negative consequences in environmental, economic and social
terms which have affected in particular the most fragile territories and the states that make
their export-oriented agrarian economy the key to their economic development.
In recent decades, soy has become an essential crop, since being the basis of zootechnical
nutrition, the expansion of intensive farming has led to an ever-increasing demand for this
product.
The case study taken into consideration in this work is Argentina, a territory where the
expansion of the agricultural frontier for cultivation suitable for export has produced the
deforestation of fragile ecological areas, unspeakable environmental damage and the eviction
of indigenous communities that have inhabited these spaces for centuries and who consider
their lands as the basis of their social structures.
The Argentine context in particular, with its contradictions and complexities, has created in
recent decades a political scenario that has favored the phenomenon in question and made the
damage just described more serious.
In the first chapter of this work, will be analyzed the agricultural economic policies and the
historical context that in the last century have favored and exacerbated the increasingly
evident openness of agro-business to foreign multinationals. From this analysis it will
immediately appear that all governments, regardless of political alignment, have accentuated
the phenomenon and its consequences in different ways.
In fact, if the neoliberal governments, from Menem in the 90s to Macri until 2019, have
expressed without filters their openness towards the agro-business multinationals, in the same
way the Peronist governments, in particular the Kirchner administrations, have continued this
openness, often hiding it behind the inclusive national-popular project towards the rural
classes of the population and with the introduction in governmental political positions of
leaders of popular peasant movements.
The aforementioned foreign multinationals are the central topic of the second chapter, in
which is treated the case study of a company, Monsanto, which has played a leading role in
Argentina, since its introduction in Argentina in 1996, of the country's first approved GMO
soybean, Roundup Ready.
3
The introduction of this product has started the process that led to the current situation in the
country. A process studded with agreements with the government, political contradictions and
the company's insinuation into the Argentine socio-economic fabric.
The environmental and social consequences in particular on local indigenous peoples are the
basis of the third chapter. In the part dedicated to the environmental issue, the main topics of
study are deforestation, desertification of soils, loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity,
with a focus on glyphosate, a substance at the base of the most used herbicides and pesticides
and which, according to numerous studies, has caused disastrous consequences for the
environment and indigenous peoples in Argentina.
The indigenous and peasant communities that inhabit these spaces are the founding theme of
the second part of this chapter which will focus on the role of governments in the process of
abandonment of the countryside and on the response of communities, exemplified in this
work through the case of the community Qom Potae Napocna Navogoh in its troubled process
of militancy and social and political struggle against the damage suffered by the expansion of
the agricultural frontier of soybeans.
Given the current economic interdependence in the world context, it is necessary in the
context of any research, to involve this dimension of analysis. The fourth chapter will
therefore analyze the role of the European Union in the process of expanding the agricultural
frontier and related damage. The EU, due to the ever growing need for soy and products based
on it, is forced to import large quantities annually, especially GMO varieties.
The dependence on the import of GMO soybeans will lead in the fourth chapter to the
analysis of the regulation of GMOs and glyphosate in the European Common Agricultural
Policy (PAC). We will also examine the contradictions underlying the European plans in
environmental terms, focusing on the externalization of environmental damage perpetrated by
the European Union, which is expressed in the gap between the large imports of soybeans and
the policies of protection of the domestic territory.
Critical analysis is built in this work through the study and consultation of scientific essays,
documents from the European Commission and the Argentine government, in order to
implement a well-founded and solid examination of the contradictions of the current
agricultural production model.
4
Chapter 1. Historical chronology of agro-export policy in Argentina, from its
origins to Macri
1.1 The economic policy of Argentine agro-export, from the construction of the Nation-
State to the government of Menem
Argentine history is closely intertwined with the agro-export of raw materials, produced in
particular in the Pampa region, which embraces the fertile plains in the center of the country
which were the cradle of this type of agrarian economy export-oriented since the end of the
19th century. After the construction of the Nation-State, European immigrants populated the
Pampa between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century but already
in the second half of the nineteenth century Argentina experienced a significant economic
development, which however did not affect the predominance of traditional agrarian elites,
composed primarily of landowning families who exported grain and livestock and had close
relations with the financial sector.1
One of the fundamental tasks carried out by the consolidated nation-state from the last twenty
years of the 19th century was to implement a systematic policy of transferring public lands into
private hands through the donation, sale or reward for services rendered to the Nation.
The concentration of land in the hands of a few and the expansion of large estates were the
most important known consequences of this type of policy.
The north of Argentina, unlike the Pampas, has historically been inhabited by the descendants
of indigenous peoples and its regional agricultural production was oriented towards the internal
market rather than global trade. In northern Argentina, sugar plantations, cotton production, and
the exploitation of native forests have historically shaped the accumulation of capital.2
At the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th century, the state promoted agro-industrialization
through the production of sugar in the provinces of Tucumán and Salta, cotton in Chaco and
Formosa, tobacco in Misiones, Salta and Jujuy, yerba mate and tea in Misiones. These agro-
industries were controlled by regional elites, but they also employed rural workers and
purchased the crops grown by small farmers and peasants. Through this process, the indigene
populations and the workers underwent a process of interbreeding and campesinización3,
phenomena that contributed to the homogenization of the different rural ethnic identities.
1
P. Lapegna (2019) The political economy of the agro‐export boom under the Kirchners: Hegemony and
passive revolution in Argentina. Journal of Agrarian Change. Pag. 315
2
S. Bandieri (2005). Del discurso poblador a la praxis latifundista. Mundo Agrario, vol. 6, nº 11.
Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Pag. 1
3
It is a set of processes that promote the homogenization of the different ethnic, cultural, economic and social
identities of rural populations, under the "peasant" category.
5
During the nationalist period of industrialization, the aforementioned dominant agrarian elite
became the favorite target of the popular project led by Juan Domingo Peròn, who took power
in 1946, after having served as Secretary of Labor for a government that improved the lease
agreements for tenants, reduced land rental prices and prohibited land evictions. Perón's role
was also instrumental in the creation of laws to protect rural workers in 1944 and 1946.
Following his rise to power, the Perón administration established a monopoly on agro-export
and founded the IAPI (Argentine Institute for the Promotion of Trade), which bought the
country's agricultural production and sold it on international markets, using the surplus to
provide credit to the domestic industry. These policies have won the support of rural laborers
and agricultural industry workers, many of whom, emigrated from the countryside, have fed
the ranks of the various trade unions gathered in the National Confederation of Workers (CGT),
a historically ally of the Peronists. However, he never completed the policies aimed at favoring
rural work and peasants. In fact, in a post-war international context of lower prices and greater
competition (and therefore within a complex scenario for Argentine exports), the Perón
administration became conciliatory towards the ruling agrarian classes; public credits were
clearly much more agro-industry oriented and the government did not intervene in any way to
improve the stagnant income of rural workers. Furthermore, he did not carry out any work of
redistribution of the earth, a project that he himself foretold in the years of his ascent. Is
important to distinguish two marked periods of Peronist agricultural policy (1946-1948 and
1949-1955) marked by the need to take power and then keep it. A first period outlined by the
desire to create a fiduciary bond with the rural class and a second period in which this renewed
bond of trust was simply instrumental to Peròn to secure the political support of the Collective
Organization of Rural Workers, a key actor in maintaining high the consense.4
About soybeans, the first references to the cultivation of this plant in Argentina date back to the
beginning of the twentieth century, and the first mention in the national statistical registers is
already in the early 1940s, when it no longer occupied 1000 ha nationwide. In fact, its use was
actually purely experimental, without any significant weight in agricultural production, until
the early 1970s when it began to expand, occupying 79,800 ha during the 1971/72 campaign (+
7880%).5
This decade plays a crucial role in Argentine history, especially in light of Peròn's death in
1974. Despite his policies, during the military dictatorship of Videla of 1976 - 1983, the
4
passive revolution in Argentina. Journal of Agrarian Change. Pag 314
5
G. Cadenazzi (2009). La historia de la soja en Argentina. De los inicios al boom de los ´90. XXVII Congreso
de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología. VIII Jornadas de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos
Aires.
6
financial and proprietary class regained its dominance. The architect of the neoliberal economic
policies of the dictatorship, José Martínez de Hoz, minister of economics during the Videlian
period, promoted policies to liberalize financial markets by eliminating state controls on credit
and raising interest rates and suspended tariffs on industrial imports, while the military detained,
tortured and murdered union leaders. In the agricultural sector, the military government has
deregulated production by eliminating minimum prices and regulatory agencies; privatized
cooperatives and state-owned companies (such as cotton companies or public slaughterhouses,
which supported the production of small farmers; Rofman, Quintar, Marqués and Manzanal,
1987) and severely repressed peasant leagues and agrarian movements in the north - east. A key
measure of the military government was the removal of "retenciones" or taxes on agricultural
exports; a measure that was reinstated in the 2000s and became a hub of the Kirchner
administrations.6
In terms of agrarian structure, these socio-political changes have been reflected in the
distribution of the land. While the agrarian censuses of 1947 and 1960 show
whereas small farms represent 80% of the total, in 1988 their proportion had fallen to 74%.
In the period of the Videla dictatorship and following the aforementioned opening towards a
more markedly liberal type of economy, soybeans, from being a marginal crop in a productive
agricultural context, came to occupy more than half of the usable agricultural area of the
country. This process, which takes the name of sojizaciòn, is part of another more general one
called agriculturizatiòn, that is the process that made agricultural production permanent,
replacing the agro-pastoral rotation that was the main production strategy in Argentina until the
mid-1970s. Both processes resulted in a strong increase in production in the long term.
The consequence, however, was, with the intensification of the exploitation of the soil and
following the abandonment of traditional agricultural practices such as agro-pastoral rotation,
green fertilizers and periods of rest, greater pressure on natural resources and towards the 1980s
yields began to decline due to soil erosion and subsequent desertification. 7
The solution to this problem, which allowed the explosive take-off of soybean cultivation in the
1990s, came from the use of the new technological package and chemicals developed by large
multinationals, which allowed an increase in yields and a reduction in costs.
6
7
Domínguez, D. y Sabatino (2006) Con la soja al cuello: crónica de un país hambriento productor de divisas, en
Alimonda, H: Los tormentos de la materia. Aportes para una ecología política latinoamericana. CLACSO,
Buenos Aires. Pág. 256
7
In the same years, the price of land gradually started to rise, a trend that did not stop in the
following 25 years. On the question of land prices, the graph (fig. 1.1) below clearly shows the
phenomenon.
Fig. 1.1
It is also important to underline that during the 90’s there was a decrease in the price of
agrochemical products, which favored their spread as well as that of the crops that need them.
The technology package consists of a combination of transgenic seeds, new land tillage methods
such as direct sowing and precision agriculture and improved chemicals such as herbicides,
pesticides, fertilizers and the development of agricultural machinery. according to new
technologies.
The first genetically modified seed introduced in Argentina was the RR soybean (RoundUp
Ready), produced by Monsanto, which we will discuss in more depth in the next chapter.
The main property of RR soy is that it is resistant to glyphosate, a broad spectrum herbicide
that kills all weeds at any stage of the cycle without affecting the soy plant, which means
significant cost savings by eliminating the work and inputs associated with the application of
pre- and post-emergence selective herbicides, which required conventional varieties.
The other important innovation that has been implemented with the introduction of transgenic
plant seeds is direct sowing, a practice that leaves the soil intact. This practice is performed
8
with machines specially designed for the purpose, which place the seed in depth with minimal
removal of the soil, eliminating the use of the plow and minimizing the tillage. In this way, the
latter is covered by the stubble of the previous harvest, which protect it from erosion, retain
moisture and compost, not to mention the time and labor savings that this system implies.8
Direct sowing began to acquire importance in Argentine agriculture at the end of the decade of
the 1980s, due to the fact that in many of the most important areas of the Pampa region
cumulative effects of soil erosion, deriving from the aforementioned agriculturizaciòn process
were already starting to manifest themselves negatively in yields.
The consequences of these solutions would have become really tangible in the 90s, the decade
of the explosive take-off of soybean cultivation.
1.2 The 90s: the soybean boom and Carlos Menem's neoliberal project
Under the administration of President Carlos Menem (1989-1999), the Argentinean government
retaken the neo-liberal socio-economic project that had been only partially implemented during
the dictatorship. The national government implemented policies promoted by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), following a widespread program of
privatization and deregulation of labor, eliminating tariffs, and implementing a mono-tary
policy that linked the Argentinean peso to the US dollar. In the agricultural sector, these policies
have led to the cancellation of regulatory measures such as price control and com-marketing of
cereals, meat, cotton, sugar; the elimination of tariffs for agricultural supplies (such as seeds,
agrochemicals and machinery), and the promotion of export goods (Teubal, 2005). This
"favourable business climate" has on the one hand attracted agribusiness multinationals such as
Monsanto, and on the other has encouraged their expansion in the country, as in the case of
Cargill.
In this context of neoliberalisation, the production of agricultural export products expanded
geographically and socially. In 1996, at the request of the Multinational Nidera, owner of the
license granted by Monsanto, the Ministry of Agriculture has approved the marketing and
release into the environment of RR soybeans through Resolution No. 167 of SAGPyA (1996),
in which "the State authorizes the production and marketing of the seed and products and by-
8
G. Cadenazzi (2009). La historia de la soja en Argentina. De los inicios al boom de los ´90. XXVII Congreso
de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología. VIII Jornadas de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos
Aires. Pag. 3
9
products soybean derivatives tolerant to glyphosate herbicide line 40/3/2 containing the gene
CP4 EP-SPS ". 9
The same year it was approved by the U.S. and since that time this crop has grown to
exponentially, especially through the ''technological package'' mentioned in the pre-ceding
paragraph, paradigmatically configuring the new profile of Argentine agriculture.10
This phenomenon, as the following chapters will show, has had deleterious effects on the
country, which still today pays dearly the price of policies that have not taken into account the
long-term economic, social and environmental damage that these choices would have
promoted.
A brief look at some figures, shown in the table below (Tab. 1.1) can give us an overview of
the extent of the Sojizaciòn process.
Tab. 1.1
9
Domínguez, D. y Sabatino (2006) Con la soja al cuello: crónica de un país hambriento productor de divisas, en
Alimonda, H: Los tormentos de la materia. Aportes para una ecología política latinoamericana. CLACSO,
Buenos Aires. Pag. 254
10
P. Lapegna (2007) Transgénicos, desarrollo sustentable y (neo)liberalismo en Argentina. Actores
sociales y redes transnacionales en la creación de un sentido común. En publicacion: Cultura y
Transformaciones sociales en tiempos de globalización. Perspectivas latinoamericanas Mato, Daniel;
Maldonado Fermín, Alejandro.
10
The data show not only the extent reached by the production of transgenic soybean in
Argentina, but also what degree of importance it holds compared to other crops.
In 1997, Argentinian farms and farmers harvested 11 million tons of
soybeans; in the same year GM soybeans covered more than 6.6 million ha and in the 2004/2005
campaign it reached 14 million ha (+112%).
In addition, we can see from the table (Tab. 1.1) how the phenomenon of the increase in soybean
fields has had as a clear consequence the decrease in the area of arable land dedicated to other
crops such as corn, rice, sunflower and wheat. It is estimated that the overall crop diversification
in Argentine agriculture decreased by 20% between 1990 and 2006 (Aizen, Garibaldi and
Dondo, 2009).
The social actors that led this agricultural expansion were mainly large agricultural enterprises
and a minority of farmers based in the Pampas. In the 1990s, landowners' organizations and
agri-food associations supported and benefited with great enthusiasm from neoliberal policies,
which had deleterious effects on local minority farmers. Aggregate data from the national
agricultural census show that in the 1990s a fifth of all farms in the sector ceased their activities,
particularly affecting small farmers. In fact, in the range of farms with an extension equal to or
less than 10 hectares, more than 38,000 farms have disappeared (Teubal et al. 2005).
The policies that during Menem's government promoted deregulation and unrestricted trade
have deepened the historically existing rift in the Argentine countryside between the Pampas
11
region and the interior. The northern regions of Argentina have been hard hit by the dismantling
of regulatory agencies that, for much of the 20th century, supported the agri-food industries
oriented towards the internal market. In the 1990s, the councils or juntas that historically
regulated production have been suppressed. Due to national economic policies, which have
reoriented agriculture towards global markets and following the elimination of state regulation
of regional production, small farmers and peasants who were an integral and fundamental part
of regional development began to play an increasingly marginal role.
The geographical and economic inequalities introduced by the neoliberalisation of the 1990s
led to the process of invisibilisation of peasant populations in the national past and in rural
policies (Barbetta, Domínguez and Sabatino, 2012).
During 1990, farmers and indigenous peoples reacted to the dislocations caused by the
expansion of agrarian neoliberalism by rekindling some of the organizations that had been
active in the 1970s and creating new ones. During the end of the 60s, in fact, there was the
creation of Farmers' Leagues with a strong bargaining power, whose insurrections were,
however, severely suppressed during the military dictatorship and whose exponents were
imprisoned and tortured. In the 1990s, the surviving leaders reorganized or shaped from scratch
many of these organizations and new peasant movements in the light of the new political-
economic-social transformations that were taking place.11
Most of these, of which we will discuss in more detail in the next chapter, actually functioned
as networks of small local indigenous groups, with the aim of mitigating the impacts of the
neoliberalization of the Argentinean rural world. It is important to underline that in the 1990s
the State, while persevering in its neo-liberal project of opening up to the agri-food
multinationals, created programs to protect the local peasant class. These apparently
contradictory tendencies reflect the dual role of the State in the processes of neoliberalisation.
Since the government, in fact, manifested its willingness to support small local agricultural
enterprises, without however showing itself willing to renounce the privileged economic
relationship with the agro-industrial multinationals. The geographers Jamie Peck and Adam
Tickell (2002, p. 391) identify in this ambivalent attitude a "parallel process of financialisation
in the field of economic policy and activation in the field of social policy". The State's attempt
to act as a promoter of development in rural areas was expressed in the various local agricultural
development programs established between the mid and late 1990s.
Among these programs, the PNEA (Programme of Small Producers of North-East Argentina)
was launched in 1991 and was later extended to other regions through the PRODER-NOA
11
12
(Rural Development Program of North-West Argentina). The aim of these programs was to
increase the income of small local producers "through the development of their
competitiveness, equity, sustainability and integration into markets" (Manzanal, 2000, p. 9). To
be among the beneficiaries of the program's funding, however, it was necessary to meet specific
requirements. Farmers had to reside in the countryside, they had to have land that did not exceed
25 hectareas and the land had to be the main source of income for the family. The strict
discrimination for participation in the program makes it easy to guess the limits of the program,
especially in light of the fact that the average size of farms in the province of Buenos Aires,
was 1230 hectareas per farmer ('93).12
The program has distributed credits up to 5,000 USD per capita13, in order to support
organizational development, technical assistance, and commercial and agro-industrial
development projects.
The INTA agency (National Institute of Agricultural Technology) has managed another large
program called PROHUERTA, born in 1990 with the aim of improving food production for
self-consumption. The program has distributed seeds and other inputs and has organized
ministries throughout the country, reaching 2.9 million beneficiaries (DDA, 2003).
Paradoxically, all these programs had the explicit or implicit objective of mitigating the impact
of agrarian neoliberalism and were financed through loans from the World Bank, the Inter-
American Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
However, these projects were guided by an orientation to "assist" economically the most
disadvantaged class of rural areas, without ever initiating a structural transformation that would
really favor this segment of the population in the long term (Manzanal, 2000).
The same language used in the documents of the PSA (Programa Social de Agricultura) often
refers to the "assistance provided to vulnerable groups", with the subtly veiled objective of
transforming farmers into businessmen, without implementing a real forward-looking change
of course. All these programs therefore approach the issue with a view to a clear division
between economic and social policies, assigning to the latter the role of a "safety net".14
In the final analysis, it is easy to see how in the 1990s, through the implementation of policies
promoted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, following a widespread
program of privatization and deregulation of labor, and by implementing a pro-export
12
Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Documento de Tenencia de la Tierra en la Década del
'90: El Caso de la Provincia de Buenos Aires.
13Between 1991 and 2002, the Argentine peso was pegged to the US dollar.
14
13
agricultural policy that favored businesses, Menem's government gave the first real slant to the
country towards a liberal economy that served as a backdrop for the boom in Argentinean agro-
export, a phenomenon that irreparably changed the country's fortunes from an agricultural point
of view.
1.3 The 21st century in Argentina: From the end of the neoliberal age to Macrism
After 20 years of unbridled neoliberalism and forced openness to the rules of the global market,
public debt reached its peak, the peasant and small landowner class was on its knees and social
discontent was growing exponentially.
The Argentine version of neoliberalism began to crumble in the late 1990s. In 1999, President
Fernando de la Rúa took power, leading a coalition of partners that pursued the same neo-liberal
macroeconomic policies as the previous government. At that point, however, this model of
economic development began to show the first signs of failure. De la Rúa announced his
government program through the "Letter to the Argentineans", in which he promised to
maintain the monetary system that has prevailed since 1991 under the Law of Convertibility,
which established a parity between the Argentine peso and the US dollar. However, the
worsening of the economic crisis that started in 1998 and the increasing instability of long-term
convertibility led the De la Rùa government to increasingly depend on foreign debt - mainly
from the IMF - to support the fixed exchange rate. These measures have led to a rapid and
persistent deterioration of the country's economy and social indicators. Subsequently, during
his presidency, the "Decree of necessity and urgency" was approved, which cut pensions and
salaries of the public administration by 13%, generating a movement of piqueteros against
government measures.
The situation in the country worsened visibly in 2001, aggravating the economic and social
crisis, which took on the guise of a political and institutional crisis, the worst in the history of
Argentina in the 21st century. On December 2, a government regulation known as the Corralito,
which limited the extraction of cash from banks, ended up provoking a generalized social
protest, with demonstrations, roadblocks and looting of supermarkets in the main cities of the
country. Failing in his attempt to manage the situation and being denied the support of the
Peronist Party, President de la Rúa resigned on December 20.
The resignation of the president triggered an institutional crisis and a succession of presidents.
In 2002, the Congress appointed Eduardo Duhalde as interim president. His administration
devalued the Argentinean peso and overthrew the relationship one by one with the US dollar.
14
This measure has had disastrous consequences for the population, as it has rapidly increased
the prices of basic necessities.
In June 2002, President Duhalde called for early elections in April 2003. Néstor Kirchner, one
of the candidates of the Peronist Party, won the elections and ascended to the presidency in May
of the same year.
Néstor Kirchner tried to differentiate his government from neoliberal principles, supporting a
policy of macroeconomic change to stimulate economic growth and promote social mobility.
During his negotiations with the IMF, in the desire to solve the problem of public debt, the
president condemned the neoliberal ideology and global financial institutions, refusing to
accept structural adjustment policies as a way to solve the crisis. Instead, he adopted the policy
of Keynesian neo-development (Féliz, 2015). The interwind on export markets has had a
prominent place among the policies of the Kirchner government. During its 4-year term of
office, export taxes on soybeans increased from 23.5% to 35%, fuelling what has been described
as "export-oriented populism" (Richardson, 2009). Néstor Kirchner did not really address the
issue of agribusiness and paid little attention to the negative social and environmental impacts
of the soybean boom.
In fact, the governmental image that confronts large foreign companies and defends small
producers against the expansion of the agro-business frontier has not only never had a real
impact in practice, but it has also never been accompanied by policies that count the negative
consequences of this expansion on the environment and local communities.
On the political front, the Kirchner administration rebuilt a hegemonic project under the banner
of a "national-popular government", through which close relations were established between
the government and social movements from below.
From the point of view of the latter, the government proposed to them to join the "national-
government project", which in practical terms meant joining state programs, yielding to the will
of the go-winter (Natalucci, 2012, p. 26). Many rural social movements felt that this measure
of cooperation with the government was the most efficient way to assert their interactions with
the government.
Thus, most peasant movements supported the Kirchners and some leaders were asked to occupy
important government positions. This strategy is in line with Nèstor K.'s theory that social
movements are the bridge between government and civil society. The main problem hidden
behind the good intentions, however, was that although citizens were given space to express
their needs, the decision-making process was still in the hands of the government, following a
top-down dynamic.
15
The relationship between popular social movements and Kirchner governments was therefore
based on mutual convenience, but did not last long. The Kirchner administration from the very
beginning led gradually to oblivion the promises made to the social movements and the close
alliances with them, marrying its orientation towards patronage policies to obtain political
support from the Peronist Party and provincial governors. 15
At the end of 2007, Néstor Kirchner ended his 4 years as president and was replaced by his wife
and former senator, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The president won the election
overwhelmingly, obtaining more than 46% of the votes.
Cristina's government was ideologically in line with the previous one, thus carrying forward
the ideals of the Peronist left and the rejection of economic neoliberalism.
From the point of view of agricultural exports, following the devaluation of the Argentine peso
after the 2001 crisis, the national government established taxes on agricultural exports in order
to appropriate part of the extraordinary income produced by the difference between national
prices (in pesos) and export revenues (in dollars). 16
In 2008, the government proposed an amendment to the export tax on soybeans and other crops,
which would adapt the tax to the variability of prices in the international market. Agri-food
associations and farmers interpreted the measure as a further inter-wind of the state against
them, and soon organized disruptive demonstrations and mobilitations to protest against this
measure (Fairfield, 2011; Giarracca and Teubal, 2010). Throughout the first half of 2008, they
fought fiercely against the export tax, ot-holding the support of large sectors of the middle class
(particularly in the Pam-pa region).
The conflict reached its peak when the Senate voted on the fate of the government's resolution.
The number of votes for and against the measure proposed by Cristina Kirchner were identical,
so Vice President Cobos had to cast the decisive vote as head of the Senate. In a tense and live
atmosphere, Cobos expressed his vote as "not positive", thus overturning the President's
proposal.
One of the effects of the agro-food protests was that soybean farmers and the media showed an
acute capacity to insinuate the idea that "what is good for the agro-industry is good for the
country", successfully presenting itself as "el campo", i.e. the countryside (with little or no
mention of farmers and indigenous peoples). It was the large landowners' associations that led
15
P.Lapegna (2016) Soybeans and power: Genetically modified crops, enviromental politics, and Social
movements in Argentina. Pag. 320
16
16
the demonstrations and obtained the support of the middle classes and the FAA (Argentine
Agricultural Federation), the historical organization of farmers.
In other words, the conflict has eroded the previously undisputed ability of the national
government to present itself as the sole promoter of the nation's interests. In Gramscian terms,
the situation has redefined the relationship of political forces and updated the hegemonic
capacity of agrobusiness in Argentina (Newell, 2009).
The second key implication of this conflict concerns the decisive (negative) vote of the Vice
President in the Senate.
The vote not only meant the end of the agricultural export tax project, but also marked the fate
of the transversal policy, which was an integral part of the pluralist hegemony built during the
government of Néstor Kirchner.
From that moment on, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner kept her political power stable through
the support of three actors: the social movements and organizations that grew up under the wing
of the Kirchner Administrations; the justice party that represented the peronist component of
the electorate; and the governors of the Argentine provinces, who control the appointment and
election of representatives of Congress and senators (Jones & Hwang, 2005). Ultimately, the
2008 conflict and its consequences represented a turning point where the national government
abandoned the idea of building its political support through a pluralist form of hegemony, in
17
favor of a top-down, organicist and hegemony.
The third implication of the conflict between the government and the agrobusiness sector was
a redesign of rural development policies. In the aftermath of the 2008 conflict, the national
government transformed the PSA18 into a permanent office. The PSA was updated and
transformed into SDRAF (Secretariat of Rural Development and Family Agriculture). This
decision has probably recognized farmers and small farmers as an important and valuable actor
in agricultural and rural life (Lapegna, 2016). However, in its implementation on a sub-national
scale, the SDRAF strengthened the power of authoritarian governors by redirecting funds to the
provincial offices controlled by them rather than continuing with the previous approach,
whereby resources were directly allocated to organizations to strengthen them politically. Seen
from a Gramscian perspective, this move expressed a move of hegemonic accommodation, in
which "important groups typically respond with material concessions that address the most
serious grievances and build "partnerships" with moderate elements, marginalizing the most
radical groups" (Levy & Scully, 2007, p. 984).
17
18
Programa Social Agricolo.
17
As Pablo Lapegna (2016) lucidly argues, the passive revolution of Kirchner's administrations
is perhaps more clearly analyzable in the dynamics between discourse and politics. While the
government dealt politically and discursively with the question of agribusiness in the public
sphere, its policies towards agribusiness actors were clearly ambivalent. In the aftermath of the
2008 conflict, the government implemented a system of export permits, distributing them in a
way that benefited the soybean oil industry. In short, the government once again expressed its
willingness to benefit the most powerful players at the expense of the lower grades of the
soybean supply chain: small and medium farmers.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's administration has also strongly encouraged the use of GM
seeds and the global companies in charge of their development. In just 6 years, between 2008
and 2013, 18 new GM crops were released in Argentina, in contrast to the 11 transgenics
approved between 1996 and 2007.
In 2012, shortly after this speech, the Ministry of Agriculture announced the approval of a new
GM soybean owned by Monsanto, which combines resistance to both herbicides and pests.
Similarly, the President established good relationships with Cargill, one of the world's leading
food and agricultural traders (Kneen, 2002). Cargill has quickly become a dominant player in
Argentinean food exports, particularly in soybeans.
Soybean production in the 12 years of Kirchnerism, due to the agricultural policies mentioned
above and the soybean price boom in the first decade of 2000, caused a significant increase in
its production.
A clearer analysis of the phenomenon is available through the following graph (Fig.1.2)
Fig. 1.2 -Evolution of the area sown with soy, sunflower and wheat.
18
Between 1997 and 2002, in the core area of soybean production, the average yield was 27.9
quintals per hectare, while between 2003 and 2014 the average yield was 34.7 quintals per
hectare, about 20% more.
In the end, it is interesting to note that during the years of the Kirchner administrations, despite
their apparent desire to protect rural peasant classes, the process of capital accumulation through
the expropriation of land in favor of disposals to multinational corporations sojeras has
worsened and the quality of life in rural areas, as will be analyzed in the following chapters,
has drastically decreased for populations exposed to the environmental consequences of the
expansion of agrobusiness.
Considered in political terms, these economic policies suggest an institutional structure that
requires a widespread consensus, but which serves particular interests, a concept that embodies
the very essence of hegemony. (Levy & Scully, 2007, p. 980). 19
With the end of Cristina Kirchner's government, the Peronist decade came to an end and a new
wave of neo-liberalism was on its way.
Mauricio Macri, won the presidential elections in Argentina in 2015 and international
organizations and financial markets considered the center-right candidate as the man born to
put the country on the path of fiscal discipline.
President Macri, newly installed, announced the lifting of export taxes on most agricultural
products and the removal of exchange controls, decisions that aim to signal an important shift
of position towards a new liberalist perspective.
This has meant a devaluation of more than 40% of the Argentine peso. In other words, two
measures were taken simultaneously to benefit and promote the agricultural export sector and
further expand soybean production.
The production of this legume in Argentina in the period 2017\2018, during the Macri
government, occupied 17.3 ha, amounting to 37.8 million tons.20
These are decisions and actions with significant territorial consequences and involving
enormous collateral damage: increased deforestation; expansion of the use of pesticides,
herbicides, transgenic seeds; dependence on transnational agro-industry companies and seed
suppliers and expulsion and persecution of the rural population with fewer resources.
The expansion of production and territorial transformations are translated into regressive
processes of social, environmental and cultural nature, and in turn in the strengthening of a
19
20
Ministero de agricoltura, ganaderia y pesca, 2019
19
renewed balance of power, a hegemonic power composed of old and new players related to the
agro-industrial and food, financial sector. In addition, social sectors made up of workers, small
and medium agricultural producers, family producers, entrepreneurs and small and medium
enterprises are put in check. (Grain, 2013; REDAF, 2010).
This shows how the apparent conflict between Kirchnerism and agrobusiness companies,
quickly ceased with the establishment of Macri, declared ally of the agro-industrial
multinationals.
In conclusion, this analysis shows how the government of Mauricio Macri, despite being
ideologically detached from Kirchnerist policies, has persevered in the work of political invisi-
bilization of certain sections of the population, through a process of strengthening the economic
and political power of a few companies, inevitably leading the country into the abyss of a social,
economic, environmental and institutional crisis from which, even today, has not been able to
free itself.
Chapter 2. Case study of a foreign multinational agro-export company and its

process of infiltration into the Argentine political and economic environment
2.1 Monsanto
The role of multinational agribusiness companies in Argentina's political economy and in

particular their role in supporting what is called "biohegemony", has been and still is
predominant regardless of the political ideology of the various governments that have followed
one another over time.
What is taking place throughout the Southern Cone, especially in Argentina through the
production of soybeans is a process of concentration of agricultural property, resulting in the
displacement of small producers from their plots, crushed by competition. A forcible or even,
at times, consensual removal: the cultivation of soybeans makes more immediate and many
farmers prefer to rent their land to those large groups that use it for the production of the legume.
This movement produces an anthropological and morphological change from the countryside,
subject to a process of standardization and a progressive impoverishment in terms of social and
trust relationships. (Stefano Liberti, 2016).
Here will be analyzed as a case study on the phenomenon, a multinational company, Monsanto,
in order to understand how has been possible its penetration in the Argentinean agro-economic
fabric, its relationship with local businesses and the Argentine government.
20
The path and practices of the Monsanto company have been the subject of controversy and
debate since its inception even before its entry into Latin America, but its penetration into the
Southern Cone has certainly highlighted even more its controversial production model and has
therefore produced many analyses of its practices and its relationship with local authorities, the
government, local businesses and the communities that live there.
Monsanto, before engaging in the production and marketing of agricultural chemicals, was a
pharmaceutical and food company.
Founded in the United States in 1901 by John Francis Queeny, in the 1930s the company began
its expansion and acquired companies engaged in the rubber chemical, textile, paper and leather
industries. This expansion continued ten years later and under the name Monsanto Chemical
Corp, it entered the plastics and resin industry. In the mid 1970s, the Roundup herbicide, which
will become the world's best-selling herbicide, began to be marketed.
In the 1990s many of its genetically modified products were approved for commercialization:
Glyphosate-resistant Roundup Ready soybean; insect-resistant novel potatoes; and insect-
resistant Bollgard cotton.
In 1956, Monsanto opened its first plastic production plant in Zárate, Buenos Aires province.
In the mid-1990s, when the company decided to devote itself entirely to the agrochemical
sector, Argentina approved the introduction of Monsanto's proprietary RR soybean.21
As mentioned in the previous chapter, therefore, in 1996, at the request of the Multinational
Nidera, owner of the license granted by Monsanto, the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture has
approved the marketing and release into the environment of RR soybeans through SAGPyA
Resolution No. 167.
Genetically modified RR soybean is resistant to glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide that
kills all weeds at any stage of the cycle without affecting the soybean plant, which implies a
significant cost reduction by eliminating the labor and inputs associated with the application of
selective pre and post emergence herbicides, which required conventional varieties.
RR soybean, which in '96 occupied no more than 1000000 ha, already in 2001 began to occupy
9000000.
It is necessary for the analysis of the phenomenon, to understand how this company has
penetrated the Argentine agricultural world.
Between about 1985 and 1990, Monsanto conducted a market study all over the world.
Agricultural producers were asked about their acceptance of seeds resistant to certain pests,
presenting their product as the ideal seed. In Argentina the proposal finds much receptivity
21
ONG Grain (2004). Monsanto y las regalías semilleras en Argentina.
21
because previously the country's agricultural system had been fully involved in what was called
the Green Revolution. Monsanto is looking for a local partner and this is how the Nidera
company, a key player in Monsanto's entry into the territory, presents itself.
The latter sold the RR soybean license to Nidera, which began producing it and attracting the
attention of other local farms interested in the high yield of this product. 22
Monsanto has not registered patents on RR soybean in Argentina and the company's rights to
23
GM seeds are limited by the national seed law.
The company's de facto monopoly of not registering patents meant that farmers could buy and
store seeds for personal use, but were not allowed to market them, so that only Monsanto itself
would benefit from the high yield of RR soybean.
In fact, since the early 1980s, the global rise in intellectual property protection (IP) in
agriculture has meant strengthening the rights of seed companies to the plant varieties they
develop, limiting farmers' rights to the seeds they grow.
Transnational seed companies have lobbied for the design and implementation of IP regimes
that allow them to maximize appropriation of economic returns from their R&D investments.24
It was therefore through a local company that Monsanto entered the country. Argentina was
among the first key territories for Monsanto's infiltration into the continent, but RR Monsanto
soybeans managed to make their way throughout the Southern Cone, even in countries where
transgenic soybean cultivation was not legal.
It is interesting to understand how this phenomenon was possible.
In fact, the expansion of RR soybean cultivation from an area of less than 1,000,000 ha in 1996
to more than 9,000,000 ha in 2001 has a lot to do with the "illegal" sale of the seed through the
so-called bolsa blanca.25This route expands the cultivation of RR soybeans in Brazil, Paraguay
and Bolivia, where GMOs are banned.
As mentioned above, the company's rights to GM seeds are limited to the national seed law,
which implies that farmers can only purchase Monsanto GM soybeans for personal use and do
not authorize their commercialization, which will be done through the bolsa blanca.
The legal vacuum that has allowed the phenomenon to spread is that Argentine law, in line with
the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, ratified by the country in
1995, allows farmers to replant the seeds they own. This is particularly relevant in the case of
autogamous crops such as soybeans, because the quality of the seed does not change from one
22
C. Caillabet (2004) Intervista a Adolfo Boy sugli obiettivi della Monsanto nel paese. Rivista Rel-Uita.
23
Ley de Semillas 20247, http://infoleg.mecon.gov.ar/txtnorma/34822.htm.
24
F. Amin Filomeno (2013) How Argentine Farmers Overpowered Monsanto: The Mobilization of
Knowledgeusers and Intellectual Property Regimes. Journal of Politics in Latin America 3/2013: Pag. 35–71
25
22
generation to the next. So in the 1990s the possibility of replanting and the lack of controls
facilitated the expansion of an illegal seed market, called the bolsa blanca market.
According to some estimates of the Argentine Association for the Protection of Plant Varieties
(ARPOV), in 2002 only 23% of the soybeans planted were certified. Genetically modified
soybeans from Argentina, also called "Maradona soybeans", were also illegally imported into
Paraguay and southern Brazil without significant obstacles.26
However, Monsanto remains silent in the face of this process, observing
how its imported technology (glyphosate resistant soybeans and glyphosate itself) was now
widespread throughout the southern cone, thanks to the advantages that the industrialized
agriculture model of direct sowing has offered to large landowners in the Pampas Region and
surrounding areas.
Given that the phenomenon of the bolsa blanca was now in full expansion throughout the
region, Monsanto began a harsh attack against agricultural producers on the "illegal" use of
their seeds and demanded that the Argentine government enforce the law.
Despite attempts by the government to stem the issue through tighter police controls, the
practice of marketing self-produced soybean seed continued. Likewise, the expansion of
soybean cultivation in the region continued, with the agricultural frontier advancing over the
last existing forests in the Chaco region and other fragile ecosystems from Argentina, Paraguay
and Brazil.
At the same time, under pressure from U.S. soybean producers condemning "unfair
competition" and finding itself without real support from the Argentinean government on the
issue, Monsanto began to establish its own measures.
Since 1999, it has applied the Extended Royalties through its seed licensees, such as Nidera,
charging farmers a fee for each 50 kg bag of soybeans stored for personal use, so as to
discourage the phenomenon of buying the product for illegal sales.
It should be noted that although this measure was in full contradiction with the national seed
law itself, which, as mentioned above, allows personal use without conditions of any kind, no
voice has been heard by the Argentine government on the illegality of this type of measure
practiced by Monsanto. 27
At the beginning of 2004, Monsanto stated that it wanted to exit the soybean market in
Argentina as it no longer considered it profitable due to the high diffusion among "illegal" seed
growers.
26
Delvenne P, et al., The “soy-ization” of Argentina: The dynamics of the “globalized” privatization
regime in a peripheral context, Technology in Society (2013)
27
23
A few days later, despite the company stated that its threat to exit the Argentinean market was
not an attempt to put pressure on the government, the Secretary of Agriculture of the Nation
during the first Kirchner government, Miguel Campos, announced that the government was
studying the creation of a law on "global royalties", aimed at creating a technology
compensation fund. This fund would be managed by the Secretariat itself and would consist of
a rate that farmers would pay with the sale of soybeans, (between 0.35 and 0.95 percent of the
sale price) and that would be enjoyed by large seed companies.
It was therefore the collection of a government tax intended to finance Monsanto.
The project was massively rejected by farmers' organizations and has not progressed in recent
months in its transit through Parliament.
The importance of this event is, however, inherent in the government's desire to maintain its
profitable relations with the company, rather than to safeguard the unpleasant economic
situation of the local farming classes, massacred by Monsanto's taxation and insurmountable
competition.
In the years in which Monsanto recorded its first productive momentum in Argentina since '96,
due to the introduction of first generation RR soybean, the impact of the company on
biodiversity, indigenous peoples, food sovereignty, the conditions of rural workers and the local
agricultural industry, has been devastating and can be defined through the UN regulations on
Corporate Social Responsibility and Other Businesses Regarding Human Rights, some of
which have been violated by Monsanto during its life cycle in Argentina.28
These norms were approved in 2003 by the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion
and Protection of Human Rights and for the first time, the issue of corporate social
responsibility in the field of international law is addressed with more commitment.
There are several UN standards that the company has violated, first of all by establishing a de
facto monopoly on the seed market in Argentina, thus crushing the food sovereignty of the
country.
Monsanto has moved towards the control of all seeds, not only transgenic ones. For this reason
it has purchased seed companies all over the world and especially in Argentina, in order to
control an essential sector, the key to the entire food chain. Once obtained control over most
conventional seeds, since there were no alternatives on the market and in open collusion with
the few companies left in the area, local producers were forced to plant their transgenic
products.
28
S. Perez Garcia (2008) INFORME DE INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE LAS OPERACIONES DE MONSANTO
EN ARGENTINA, report n°5. Pag. 5
24
To get a more precise idea of the de facto monopoly that Monsanto has managed to hold in the
country and the world following the revolution that took place thanks to the introduction of RR
soybean and the company's production methods, it is necessary to underline the fact that in 2008
Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta - represented 44% of the world seed market and Monsanto -
which in 1996 was not even among the top 10 - represented 20% of the global total.29
In addition to jeopardizing the country's food sovereignty, the U.S. company's production
model has violated the U.N. regulation on CSR, which concerns the company's responsibility
to ensure the protection of the environment and biodiversity both during the production and
marketing of any product.
The complaints of contamination registered already in the early 2000s in almost all Argentine
provinces, are noumerous. Among the latter, in several municipalities in the province of
Cordoba, as in the case of the Ituzaingó district in 2004, several chemical agents traceable to
Round-up Monsanto, used for fumigation in soybean fields, were found.
In domestic water tanks the presence of agrochemicals such as Endosulfan and Heptachlor and
heavy metals such as lead, chlorine, arsenic have been detected.
In the same period examined, in that territory there was also an exponential increase in diseases
such as cancer, lupus, violet, hemolytic anemia and respiratory and skin allergies. 30
In the province of Formosa cases of contamination have been recorded in several locations. The
best known occurred in February 2003, when 23 families of small producers in the city of
Cologne Loma Senés, department of Pirané, saw their crops and farms totally or partially
destroyed due to the usual fumigation carried out by "mosquitos" machines, with glyphosate
and 2.4 D, in the fields occupied by a soybean farm (Proyecto Agrícola Formoseño PAF), on
31
the border with the family farms.
Monsanto, in the first ten years of expansion of its sojero domain, has therefore played a
fundamental role in the transformation of Argentina into a green desert.
Soybean plantations have devastated vast territories and ecosystems, ruined thousands of small
producers and farmers and put an end to the country's traditional wealth and biodiversity.
The defense of the interests of Monsanto soybean agrobusiness has created a model of
systematic violence against rural and indigenous populations that results in evictions, arrests,
persecution and threats to those who resist. The pressure to leave their lands is translated into
harassment ranging from intentional contamination of water sources to theft or killing of
29
30
31
Observatorio de las Empresas Transnacionales (2008) Glifosato y Transgénicos, el caso argentino y las
consecuencias sobre la salud. Fonte: Ecoportal.net
25
livestock. The intensive use of chemicals for agriculture and fumigation of soybean crops has
therefore caused the contamination of the territories of the surrounding population, crops,
32
animals and water sources.
The presumed production efficiency achieved was realized on the basis of the natural subsidy
granted by the fertile Argentine pampas.
However, this has entered into crisis and what emerges is the result of years of over-exploitation
of the land.
The agro-productive model of Monsanto, replicated by many Argentine companies, has caused
irreparable environmental damage and a current ecological crisis throughout the territory.
It has never been easy to investigate Monsanto's work and the environmental and human and
animal health consequences of glyphosate and its harmful products, as the company, in the face
of countless complaints from rural workers, social organizations, NGOs and individuals over
the past 20 years, has always denied, even in the face of the evidence, its share of responsibility
and besmirching the evidence by all means.
Recently, one of the last and toughest attacks worthy of note received by Monsanto, came in
2017 from a report by Le Monde, through which the newspaper told of the harsh attack that the
IARC, WHO Institute for the cataloguing of carcinogens, has had and is still suffering from
Monsanto, after having demonstrated in its Monograph No. 112 of 2015 the cangerogenicity of
glyphosate, the main component of the herbicide Roundup, Monsanto's most widely used
product in agriculture.
The information on which Le Monde has built its investigation is part of the Monsanto Papers,
internal documents made public in the United States in early 2017 as part of legal proceedings.
The IARC considers the most widely used herbicide in the world genotoxic (i.e. capable of
damaging DNA), carcinogenic to animals and "probably carcinogenic" to humans.
Used for more than forty years, glyphosate enters the composition of at least 750 products
marketed by a hundred companies in more than 130 countries.
Between 1974, when it was launched on the market, and 2014, glyphosate used worldwide
increased from 3,200 to 825,000 tons per year. 33
The spectacular increase is due to the increasingly widespread adoption of genetically modified
seeds to tolerate this substance, the so-called Roundup Ready seeds.
32
EN ARGENTINA, report n°5. Pag 12
33
Stéphane Foucart e Stéphane Horel (2017). « Monsanto papers », désinformation organisée autour du
glyphosate. In the edition of 2 june 2017, Le Monde.
26
Monsanto risks succumbing if the use of this substance is restricted or banned altogether. The
U.S. company has in fact developed glyphosate and made it the basis of its economic model.
It has built its fortune by trading Roundup and the seeds that tolerate it.
So, when Iarc announced that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic," Monsanto reacted with
unprecedented violence, commenting on the story in a company statement in which it claims
that IARC has implemented a biased selection of limited data.
In the same year, in response to the allegations, Hollingsworth, Monsanto's law firm sent a letter
to the IARC panel of experts who looked into the matter, ordering them to hand over all files
related to monograph 112.
The letter is just one of the tools of intimidation used by the firm to escape serious allegation
by the IARC.
In the months following the publication of Monograph 112, Croplife International, the
organization that defends the interests of pesticide and seed producers worldwide, contacted
representatives of some of the 25 countries meeting in the IARC Governing Council to
complain about the quality of the agency's work.
In the same year, complaints from individuals against the company increased exponentially,
with 3,500 complaints in which American citizens suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a
rare blood cancer, blame the fumigation of the Monsanto herbicide as the cause of their
condition.
Given the context, Le monde brings to light a second part of the investigation, which brings to
light an aspect of the issue that caused a media scandal against Monsanto: the accusations of
ghostwriting34. The experts enlisted by the multinational, under remuneration, signed articles
not written by them, but by Monsanto employees.
These were scientific papers published in specialized journals, but also articles intended for a
wider audience, through which the company defended itself against accusations about the
negative effects of glyphosate on the environment and health. 35
At present, the debate on the negative consequences of the latter is still in vogue, at European
and global level, but the merit of Le Monde's investigation lies in having brought to light clear
responsibilities of Monsanto, on the environmental damage and health of the territories and
those who live there, showing once again the negative consequences brought by a company that
has been a founding part of an agricultural production model that endangers biodiversity, which
34
It consists in acting as a ghost author.
35
Stéphane Foucart e Stéphane Horel (2017). « Monsanto papers », désinformation organisée autour du
glyphosate. In the edition of 2 june 2017, Le Monde.
27
leads to the desertification of the territories, which concentrates the ownership of the land in
the hands of a few and which produces the loss of autonomy by local agricultural producers,
crushed by the weight of insurmountable competition and the ecological crisis caused by this
production model, now no longer sustainable.
Chapter 3. The dark side of the expansion of the frontier of the sojera industry:
environmental consequences and rural conflict
3.1 Environmental and human, plant and animal health consequences.
The agricultural production model established in Argentina and the parallel boom in soybean
cultivation, has allowed the country to enter the global agricultural market but at a very high
price. The price of this moment of economic growth was paid by conflicts over land, loss of
food sovereignty, irreparable damage to the Argentinean ecosystem and local communities.
This is a model that in the long term has important ecological and social consequences, such as
the acceleration of deforestation, the appearance of glyphosate-resistant weeds, air
contamination, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, concentration of land and production factors
and conditioning of rural and urban migration dynamics.
One of the main phenomena derived from the expansion of the agro-industrial frontier of
soybeans is deforestation.
According to data from the National Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development
(2020), in the period 2004-2012, 2.501.912 hectares of native Argentinean forests were razed
to the ground, the equivalent of 124 times the area of Buenos Aires. The cause, as obvious as
unpunished, is the advancement of the agricultural frontier suitable for the production of
transgenic products, in particular soybeans.
In Argentina, the advancement of soybeans on a regional scale has implied the deforestation of
native forests such as Chaco and Yunga, mainly in areas with low slope and sufficient rainfall,
so that there is no need for irrigation systems (Argentine Ministry of Environment and
Sustainable Development, 2012).
Corruption, non-compliance with the funding provided by the Forest Law of 2009 and the sale
of land to the soybean market are certainly the main causes of this phenomenon.
The Law of Native Forests in Argentina was promulgated and regulated in 2009 by former
president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, after several social, aboriginal and human rights
28
organizations alerted the government to the fierce expansion of the agricultural border, which
has led the country to lose 71% of its native ecosystems.36
This law states that the National Fund for the Enrichment and Conservation of Native Forests
must not be less than 0.3% of the total national budget, a threshold that, to date, has never been
reached.
The services and environmental benefits provided by native forests and recognized by the same
law mentioned above are water regulation, biodiversity conservation, soil conservation and
water quality, carbon fixation, contribution to the diversification and beauty of the landscape,
and defense of cultural identity, as well as the potential for renewable energy that forests
themselves offer. These environmental services have the characteristic of being community-
37
based, so their benefit is for society as a whole.
Deforestation therefore causes damage to society, depriving it of a community benefit given by
a natural resource with innumerable advantages.
The elimination of taxes on exports of cereals such as soybeans, as decided by Macri in 2016
in its objective of opening up to the global market, has encouraged the clearance and
deforestation of immense areas. This clearance is likely to expand the frontier of these crops at
the expense of the native forest area, especially in the Chaco region. This phenomenon has
caused the displacement of communities that have developed their economy and social model
on the resources and spaces of the native forest, therefore, the deprivation of their habitat is
violence.
This scenario has also determined a process of concentration of land and wealth accompanied
by a homogenization of production based on monocultures and the loss of forest ecosystem
services generation.
The loss of the latter, of vital importance, is among the most serious consequences of this
scenario. Ecosystem Services, according to the definition given by the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment (MA), 2005), are "the multiple benefits provided by ecosystems to mankind". The
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment describes four categories of ecosystem services: life
support, which includes soil formation and primary production; supply; regulation, which
includes climate and tidal regulation and water purification; and cultural values, including
aesthetic, spiritual, educational and recreational values.
36
D. Aranda (2015) Tierra arrasada: Petrolèo, soja, pasteras y megaminerìa. Pag 179
37
Ministerio de ambiente y desarollo sostenible de Argentina (2020) Causas e impactos de la deforestación de
los bosques nativos de Argentina y propuestas de desarrollo alternativas.
29
Through this type of policy, from 2016 to 2018, the rate of deforestation has increased
dramatically again (Argentine Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2020).
The phenomenon of deforestation has also led to the progressive impoverishment of the soil,
causing a decrease in its productive capacity, which has often resulted in desertification.
Soil degradation has been caused, among other things, by the end of agricultural rotation. This
occurs because soybeans are produced for two or more consecutive harvests, without rotations
of different crops and without giving the soil rest periods to restore soil fertility.
A study by INTA and the Center for the Promotion of Soil and Water Conservation (PROSA)
has determined the development of water and wind erosion processes in the last quarter of a
century in Argentina. 36% of the total soil in Argentina suffers from erosion processes. This
percentage represents about 100 million hectares in the country, distributed in the agricultural
areas of the wet and sub-humid region and, in addition, in the semi-arid and arid area with
native forests and grasslands.38
Many of the regions that before the advent of GM soy monoculture, were agroecosystems with
multiple productions, are now unproductive deserts, so-called green deserts, since the intensive
cultivation of transgenic soybeans in these regions has not only reversed their ecological
balance, but also extracts the little organic matter that its fragile soils present.
Soils that in most cases, not being resilient enough, become physical skeletons (Paruelo et al.,
2005; Sarmiento,2007: 8-9).
When the ecological balance in natural systems is destroyed, one also loses the opportunity to
take advantage of the many advantages they provide.
Soils are living and dynamic ecosystems, their desertification causes problems of hydro-
geological instability, climate change and the essential function of carbon stock, which in a
forest represents more than 50%, is lost.
The social consequences of this phenomenon are immense.
Drought and loss of land productivity are in fact some of the main causes of migration.
Migration which, in turn, can negatively influence the possibility of sustainable exploitation of
the territories by the local population, often forced to leave their lands. 39
Soil is essential for any community, it is the first non-renewable resource of importance, and is
therefore the basis of many rural indigenous social groups.
Its erosion causes irreparable damage to their social and economic structure.
38
Ministerio de ambiente y desarollo sostenible de Argentina
39
Andrés E. Carrasco, Norma E. Sánchez, Liliana E. Tamagno (2012) Modelo agrícola e impacto socio-
ambiental en la Argentina: monocultivo y agronegocios. Pag 29-30
30
Due to the expansion of the agricultural frontier of soybeans through deforestation, weeds
resistant to glyphosate, the main ingredient of the Roundup herbicide, have appeared. The
presence of resistant varieties has therefore led producers to increase the amount of herbicide
used, further aggravating the already heavy environmental damage to the Argentinean
ecosystem.
The use of agrochemicals in Argentina has increased significantly in recent years, clearly in
close connection with the expansion of GM soybeans, as shown in the graph (fig. 3.1).
Fig. 3.1
31
Source: Own elaboration based on data from INTA, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria and SGPyA,
Segreteria Nazional de Agricultura, Ganaderia y Pesca.
While 28 million liters of glyphosate were used in Argentina in 1997/98, in 2012 the annual
40
amount used was 200 million liters.
In Argentina, herbicides containing glyphosate, such as Monsanto's Rounpup, already treated
previously, are surprisingly affordable, costing on average 1\3 of what it costs in the U.S..
Since the dawn of 2000, journalists and NGOs have started reporting cases in which
agrochemicals spread by fumigation helicopters on soybean fields have had disastrous effects
on the lands and campaigns of local families, bringing negative effects on the health of
inhabitants, livestock and watercourses. 41
In February 2003, a group of small farmers from Loma Senés Colony, in the department of
Pirané, Formosa, suffered the destruction of their horticultural, agricultural and industrial crops
due to a cloud of glyphosate and 2-4 -D, which flooded their small farms and was intended for
fumigation from nearby RR soybean fields.
40
41
32
The producers, members of the Formosa Farmers' Movement, the Committee of Women
Farmers and the Feriantes de Pirané Association, set up a committee and an action group to
defend their rights against companies using glyphosate-based herbicides on local farms and
homes. Thanks to this determined action on the part of the producers, the case reached a certain
relevance, since in general, the media, including the government media, did not reflect the
problem in its true scope. Rather, they tried to minimize it. 42
Peasant families in La Leonesa and Las Palmas, small towns in the Chaco region, in the early
2000s, denounced the effects on human health of the agrochemicals present in the herbicides
used on soy and rice plantations.
In 2010, after 9 years of trial, an official investigation by the Comisiòn de Investigación de
Contaminantes del Agua del Chaco, revealed that, in just ten years, cancer cases in the infant
age group and birth malformations have increased by almost 400%. 43
Already since 2006, Argentine environmental activist organizations have launched a national
campaign to discuss the consequences of exposure to agrochemical agents, making the public
impact of the phenomenon more relevant.
Since this event, numerous studies demonstrating the negative consequences of glyphosate
fumigation have been published, including the study by Dominguez and Sabatino in 2010,
which documented 32 cases of families affected by the agrochemical agent.
In the same years, given the scale of the phenomenon, the provincial courts of Santa Fe and
Chaco supported the request of families in affected neighborhoods and ordered the suspension
of the application of agrochemicals near populated areas.
In 2014, the Ministry of Health of Córdoba released a study on cancer cases in the province.
The most alarming finding, which takes into account the period 2004-2009, is that the area of
Pampa Gringa, an area of northeastern Argentina where the greatest amount of glyphosate and
agrochemicals are used, has the highest death rate, almost double the national average.
This was the first work in which a study was carried out that took into account geographically
all the Argentine departments, so that a comparison of data by area could be made.
According to data from the International Agency for the Study on Cancer, in those years the
Argentinean mortality rate was on average 115.13 per 100,000 inhabitants, while the average
in the Cordoba area of Pampa Gringa was 229.8. 44
42
43
Andrés E. Carrasco, Norma E. Sánchez, Liliana E. Tamagno (2012) Modelo agrícola e impacto socio-
ambiental en la Argentina: monocultivo y agronegocios. Pag. 49
44
33
The question of the carcinogenicity of glyphosate is still open, as demonstrated, however, by
the recent investigation by Le Monde on the study of long-term damage of this agent carried
out by Airc, published in 2017 and discussed in the previous chapter with reference to the
company Monsanto.
Although multiple studies have demonstrated the serious effects of fumigation of agrochemical
agents, the health impacts of crops, livestock, humans and entire communities continue to be
perpetrated.
One of the most evident forms of the ecological threat posed by the extension of the agricultural
frontier is the loss of biodiversity, both of landscapes and animal species. The different
ecosystems that make up the Chaco Forest or the Pampas are made up of plant and animal
species among which there are fundamental interactions that make up a trophic web responsible
for the structure and functioning of the ecosystem.
Between 2000 and 2012, the percentage of reptiles and amphibians listed in the category of
endangered animals is 70 points, from 8% to 78%, while reptiles increased from 27% to 36%
and turtles from 55% to 64%. 45
The massive use of insecticides, suitable to deal with the damage caused by insects on soybean
crops, not being discriminating, damage and lead to the extinction of many species of
pollinating insects. It is necessary to emphasize that although soybeans are mainly autogams,
so they pollinate themselves in most cases, pollinating insects give them a fundamental plus
that translates into yield increases.
Therefore, the indiscriminate use of insecticide, paradoxically leads to an economic damage to
the supply chain.
The unscrupulous consumption of herbicides and pesticides and the lack of ecological criteria
occurs in all agricultural activities in Argentina and has to do with the current production model.
Transcending cereal production, in the same way as wet pampas with soybeans, the toxic logic
is repeated in the production of vegetables in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, in the
Upper Rio Negro Valley in apple and pear production, and in tobacco production in the north
of the country.
The end result is the excellent and highly demanding model of agricultural production that leads
to a growing expulsion of producers, impoverishment of working class living and working
conditions and environmental pollution, including human beings.
45
Convention on biological diversity (2014). Status and trends of biodiversity, including benefits from
biodiversity and ecosystem services. https://www.cbd.int/
34
Territories and their biodiversity count not only as containers of a multiplicity of life forms and
local customs, but rather as natural reserve areas, habitats of biological and cultural diversity
and which are appreciated for their genetic wealth and their potentially exploitable natural
resources. These geographical spaces thus become scenarios of a confrontation, of a territorial
dispute between different social agents, multinationals, social movements, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and the nation states themselves, regardless of whether they are
subordinate countries or central countries, which in many cases support and facilitate
strategies of appropriation of multinationals in these territories and their natural resources.46
The silence, the lack of interest on the part of the established authority and the underlying
economic interests, however, do not hold back the good practices and struggles for change
implemented by local communities, peasants and citizens, who despite the difficulty of living
in a polluted, complex and often impenetrable context, do not cease to live their territory as a
space of struggle and political militancy.
3.2 Rural conflict and the case of the Qom Potae Napocna Navogoh community
The rural indigenous communities that have inhabited the Argentine territory for centuries, have
been suffering the effects of the soybean agrobusiness boom for decades, through the
expropriation of their land, environmental damage and forced emigration from the countryside,
due to agricultural unemployment and eviction from their living space and association.
An analysis of the land situation in Argentina shows that the distribution of this key resource
for agricultural production has remained highly concentrated. However, it is necessary to
highlight how during the years of the Kirchner administrations, the process of accumulation by
expropriation (Cáceres, 2014; Harvey, 2003) has become more acute and life in the countryside
has become more difficult for populations exposed to the environmental effects of the
expansion of the agro-food industry.
The distribution of land in Argentina is highly uneven: in 2011, 2% of farms controlled 50% of
the land, while 57% of smaller farms controlled only 3% of the land (Sili & Soumoulou, 2011,
p. 51). Between the late 1980s and early 2000s, farms of up to 500 hectares lost control of 69%
of the available land, while those of more than 500 hectares increased their control by 12% (Sili
& Soumoulou, 2011, p. 54). This unequal distribution of land is prior to the Kirchner
administrations.
46
35
Yet the effects of the expansion of agrobusiness under their governments have clearly not
stopped worsening. Conflicts over land and land control lay bare the belly of neo-evolutionism,
a "dark side" of the Kirchnerian-style national-popular project that is often overlooked and is
expressed in not taking proper account of the subnational rural dimension.
The expansion of agrobusiness in the 2000s caused a series of negative consequences for
subordinate rural populations. First, it has clearly led to an increase in demand for arable land.
When the availability and price of land in the rich soils of the Pampas reached their limit in the
early 2000s, agribusiness expanded in northern Argentina.
In the northern provinces, large tracts of land owned by provincial elites or increasingly leased
to farms invaded the small estates of peasant families and indigenous communities (Goldfarb
& van der Haar, 2015). This demand for land soon resulted in violence and conflict, which led
to the deaths of several indigenous farmers and activists in northern Argentina.47
For those populations that have not been evicted from the land, the extensive production of the
GM soybean resistant to herbicides has caused the runoff of agricultural chemicals into
watercourses and air contamination, endangering the health of rural populations. (Arancibia,
2013; Binimelis, Pengue, & Monterroso, 2009; Leguizamón, 2014).
The Subsecretariat of Family Agriculture of the Nation, published in June 2013 the first official
report on rural conflict data in the country.
According to the report, the size of the land area in dispute, is 9.3 million ha, 857 cases
involving about 63,843 families. The area is equivalent to 455 times that of the city of Buenos
Aires. 64% of the conflicts began in the early 2000s and the study indicates that undoubtedly
the beginning of the disputes should be read in light of the impact of the expansion of the
agricultural frontier on family farming. 48
The data on the phenomenon and its causes, are confirmed in the same year by the report
"Conflicts on land ownership and environment", carried out by the Agroforestry Network
Argentina del Chaco, a platform that for years detects land related conflicts in the geographical
area of Chaco.
According to this report, of the 248 cases found in the area, 224 are caused by actions that
trample the rights of farmers and indigenous people in relation to land ownership.
47
48
Ministero de Agricultura, Ganaderìa y Pesca de la Naciòn (2013) Relevamiento y sistematizaciòn de
problemas de tierra de los agricultores familiares en Argentina.
36
The counterpart of the conflict, in 70% of the cases, is represented by the private sector and
30% by the State, often accused by peasant and indigenous families of not guaranteeing the
respect of the property titles recognized to them. 49
The conflict is directly related to the different forms of understanding of the territory. For the
communities that live in the space, it is a struggle to preserve their identity and their way of
conceiving production, work, territory and nature.
As of 2013, 5.93% of the land was in foreign hands. The data was presented by the same
president Cristina Kirchner in July 2013, and comes from a cadastral map of rural lands of
foreign possession implemented that year by the government.
Compared to the report on Chaco, an explanatory case study of the issue is certainly that of the
community Qom Potae Napocna Navogoh, called La Primavera, residing in Chaco and the
process of territorial conflict between the community on the one hand and the National
Government and the Province of Formosa on the other.
The community was formed through its political actions in a paradigmatic case of an indigenous
agency, which faced both governments with scarce material resources but with solid symbolic
and political resources. One of the peculiarities of the case is the way in which, throughout this
political process, the Qom of Potae Napocna Navogoh and in particular its leader Félix Diaz,
have capitalized on the different political experiences they have lived through dynamically
reconfiguring their strategies.50
Potae Napocna Navogoh is a rural indigenous community located 174 kilometers from the city
of Formosa, in the border area with the Republic of Paraguay.
It constitutes the most fertile area of the province, conforming its landscape with mountains of
abundant vegetation, dotted with estuaries and lagoons. Like the rest of the communities living
in the province, Potae Napocna Navogoh suffers from a deep structural inequality with respect
to the rest of society, inequality that embraces all social dimensions, from education, health,
work, access to justice.
The production of soy and cotton in their territories and the mechanization and technological
development related to cultivation, has caused a decrease in the hiring of local labor, such as
the category of harvesters. 51
49
D. Aranda (2015) Tierra arrasada: Petrolèo, soja, pasteras y megaminerìa. Pag 301-302
50
Lorena Cardin (2013). La comunidad qom Potae Napocna Navogoh (La Primavera) y el proceso de lucha por
la restitución de su territorio. Pag. 5-6
51
Lorena Cardin (2013). La comunidad qom Potae Napocna Navogoh (La Primavera) y el proceso de lucha por
la restitución de su territorio. Pag. 9-10
37
In addition, the concentration and centralisation of capital in soybean and cotton production has
affected the possibility of indigenous people continuing to develop as independent commercial
producers (Iñigo Carrera, 2008).
Although the people of Qom have been persecuted and pushed for decades to abandon their
ancestral lands since the dawn of colonial times, their situation worsened when the lucrative
soybean frontier reached Formosa and Chaco, and the land increased in value exponentially.
Since 2010, the qom people's struggle has begun to assume greater public impact, due to the
willingness of the political community La Primavera to acquire media visibility among the
younger sections of the population, which have been decisive in the last decade with respect to
the issue. This public impact was also due to the strong response of the community to
Kirchneriste policies, which instead of implementing a real change against land grabbing in
place for years, have continued to expand the network of agreements with agribusinesses.
The introduction of the Law n. 26.16052 , promulgated at the end of 2006 for the duration of 4
years, and subsequently extended until 2021, has produced a general enthusiasm. This was
because, as a legal instrument, it potentially allowed the provincial government to "demand" a
solution to the historical problem of the ancestral territory. But that enthusiasm turned into
disappointment because of the difficulties of articulation between the national and provincial
levels of government and because, at the provincial level, the rights of indigenous people met
with the usual pitfalls: land occupation, violent evictions, police repression, judicialization of
the complaint. 53
When in 2003 Nèstor Kirchner assumed the presidency, he set out a social-political program in
which the objective was to establish a new line of action aimed at generating a state intervention
capable of exiting the neo-assistentialist model of the 1990s (Lenton and Lorenzetti 2005) and
giving rise to another one where the beneficiaries were subjects by right.
In the field of indigenous policies, this change of direction has taken various forms. Thus, for
example, the INAI created the Indigenous Participation Council in response to a sustained
request for compliance with current regulations.
Among these changes, two deserve special mention: the enactment of the Emergency Law
(n.26. 160) on the possession and ownership of land traditionally occupied by indigenous
communities originating in the country (2006) and the Bicentennial celebrations in 2010. While
the first tried to be a response to the problem of land and territory, the second one tried to be a
52
Ley nacional 26160 de relevamiento territorial de comunidades indígenas.
53
S. Soria (2015) Políticas indigenistas en la Argentina kirchnerista.
Íconos, Revista de Ciencias Sociales. Pag. 3-4
38
symbolism of a nation that includes indigenous peoples and considers them not as beneficiaries
of welfare measures, but as subjects of law. 54
The key to the analysis is certainly to understand what the subjects demarcated as indigenous
people have been able to do in this political field, strained both by new forms of inclusion and
by the riterritorialization of exclusion. It is also necessary to analyze how communities have
articulated their demands and how they have influenced the dynamics of the political field.
What happened to the community of Qom Potae Napocna Navogoh allows us to move in that
direction of understanding.
In 2007, the province decided to subdivide the land of Qom Potae and assigned 609 hectares to
the National University of Formosa, to build university buildings.
In coincidence with the beginning of the works, in mid-2010, during the last phase of the first
administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the community of Qom Potae Napocna
Navogoh led by Félix Díaz began the road block of the national highway 86 that crosses the
province of Formosa, to prevent the construction of the headquarters. On November 23 of the
same year, the intervention of the provincial police led to a violent repression that caused the
death of Qom Roberto López.
What was the basis of the dispute of November 23, 2010?
The events of 2010 were the culmination of a series of processes of expulsions, submissions,
overlapping measurements and ways to incorporate indigenous claims into provincial politics.
The culmination of a decade of transfers of Qom land to Argentinean and foreign companies
by the National Government and the Province itself, which remained silent as the agricultural
and food frontier of soybeans expanded, making the remaining territories more and more
limited to the indigenous population and suppressing in violence the numerous actions of claim.
Never in two hundred years have indigenous peoples reached the center of political power in
Argentina so strongly. And the affirmation, unequivocal and powerful, is the same as in the last
two centuries: land, rejection of the companies that evicted them, respect for their ancestral
culture and justice in the face of past and present abuses.
The indigenous Argentinean history of the 21st century, is a history that deals with the
usurpation of the territory, unreachable competition, uncontrolled agribusiness, irreparable
environmental damage and change of a social and political structure that has had to adapt to the
marginal role attributed to it by the Government and Argentinean society.
54
S. Soria (2015) Políticas indigenistas en la Argentina kirchnerista.
Íconos, Revista de Ciencias Sociales. Pag. 7-8
39
It is a story that, however, deals at the same time with struggle, with identities that have
deconstructed and rebuilt to try to recover, still today, their lost territories and regain possession
of the spaces that for centuries have been the backdrop to a reality still fundamental and
persistent in the Argentin rural fabric.
Chapter 4. Regulation of soybeans, GMO products and glyphosate in the

context of the EU Common Agricultural Policy and the European environmental
paradox
4.1 GMO regulation and soya import into the EU: key points and contradictions.
GMO production, the ever-increasing demand for soybean products suitable for animal feed
and the use of glyphosate products are issues that are gaining a prominent place in the world
debate and not only in Argentina.
The Argentinean phenomenon, with its peculiarities and the negative consequences accentuated
by the socio-economic situation and the policies of successive governments, is part of a global
situation in which the expansion of intensive livestock farming requires more and more
quantities of soybeans, especially GMOs, for animal feed.
The production of GMO soybeans in Argentina is mainly devoted to export and the expansion
of the agro-business frontier for the production of this crop is directly related to the exponential
increase in demand for GMO soybeans or products based on them from the rest of the world,
the US, the EU and China.
It is therefore interesting in this context to analyze the regulation of production and import of
this crop in the European Union, one of the main recipients of soy-based products in the world.
More precisely, it is necessary to examine the issue in the light of the rules of the PAC, the
Common Agricultural Policy of the EU.
The production and supply of vegetable proteins, including soybeans, for the agri-food sector
has repeatedly stimulated the political debate at EU level, given the growing difference between
supply and demand for this product, which forces the EU to import more and more soybeans,
mostly GMO, from abroad.
In 2018, the European Commission published the Report from the Commission to the Council
and the European Parliament on the development of plant proteins in the European Union,
among which soybeans are the most important, analysing their production in relation to the UE
requirement of this product.
40
The Report also aims to explore the possibilities of further developing the production of these
products in an economically and environmentally sustainable way.
According to the report in 2016/17, the demand for plant proteins in the EU was about 27
million tons of proteins. The feed market, given the expansion of intensive livestock farming
in the EU, is by far the most important outlet (93% by volume) and is mainly supplied by oilseed
meal.
Since the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2013, the area under soybean
cultivation in the EU has doubled to almost one million hectares, with a production of 2.8
million tons in the EU in 2018. Among the main soybean producers, together with France and
Romania, there is Italy.
In fact in Italy, according to Istat data, the cultivated area has more than doubled from 153
thousand hectares in 2012 to 318 thousand in 2017. With these data, Italy is the first European
producer, three times more than France, which is the second. Despite this, Italian self-
sufficiency is only 20%.
Although Italy produces 400,000 tons per year of soybean, a quantity that compared to the rest
of the EU countries is quite significant, in reality it is a quantity that is not even suitable to meet
the domestic demand of the country, which is 4 million per year.
Despite the doubling of the soybean cultivated area, the EU self-sufficiency rate, therefore the
ratio between what it produces and what it needs, in the case of soybean is 5%, which translates
into the need to import the remaining 95% annually.
As a result, the EU imports about 17 million tons of crude protein each year, of which 13
million tons are soybean-based and represent the equivalent of 30 million tons of soybeans,
mainly from Brazil, Argentina and the USA.
With a market share of 72% of EU soybean imports, the US is currently Europe's leading
supplier. Europe, on the other hand, is the top destination for US soybean exports (22%),
followed by China (18%) and Mexico (9%). 55
At supranational level, in July 2017, 14 Member States signed the "EU-European Declaration
on Soybeans", committing themselves to promote sustainable soy production in suitable areas
of Europe, to include it in various crop rotations and to develop sustainable markets for
soybeans and other legumes in Europe. The signatories are committed to taking measures such
as reducing dependence on imported soybeans through a more effective use of European protein
sources.
55
Joint EU-US statement. Report of the European Commission 16/04/19
41
To date, however, the EU continues to be dependent on imports in the sector.
Europe, with the exception of some cases such as Spain and Portugal, does not produce GMO
crops but is authorized to market them, following the directives that the 2001 Declaration on
GMOs in Europe states.
The cornerstone of European standards is the great attention paid to the evaluation of all
potential risks, based on the precautionary principle. In addition, all authorizations are
guaranteed for a limited period of time during which an accurate monitoring of environmental
and health effects must be carried out. In such a way that, even if unexpected negative effects
should occur, the authorization can be revoked or not renewed.
The import paradox described above, in recent years has opened a heated debate in the European
Parliament and among the various States, due to the desire to understand, at this point, what are
the reasons that push the EU to have such a conservative attitude on GMO production, if it
imports annually a huge amount from non-European countries where GM production is allowed
and promoted.
The issue has become topical again with the extension of the prohibitions provided for by the
European legislation to the new techniques of genetic engineering, which have deeply evolved
since the beginning of GMOs in the world agricultural panorama more than 20 years ago.56
The extension of the ban to experiments was established by a ruling of the EU Court of Justice,
which made the scientific world discuss and created new divisions in the agricultural world,
because it risks blocking innovation and research in the sector. Until forcing the EU Council,
last November, to recognize the need to revise the 2001 European Directive on GMOs.
The EU Council recognized the problem by formally establishing that on new mutagenesis
techniques there is a "condition of uncertainty" that must be overcome with "new provisions",
referring to the judgment published by the European Court in July 2018.
The document, the result of a laborious compromise, invites the Commission to present, by
April 30, 2021, a study on the status of new mutagenesis techniques in EU law in the light of
the Court's judgment. Only after that can the Commission "submit a proposal" or "inform the
Council of other necessary measures". 57
Among the most recent innovations with respect to the increasing openness of the European
Union to the GMO issue and the agro-business multinationals involved in this global
phenomenon is the approval in October 2020 of the import and marketing within the EU borders
of a variety of GMO soybeans produced by Bayer-Monsanto for food and feed.
56
Alessio Romeo, ”Ibridi sperimentali, l’Europa riapre il dossier Ogm”. 12 gennaio 2020, Ilsole24ore.
57
Alessio Romeo, ”Ibridi sperimentali, l’Europa riapre il dossier Ogm”. 12 gennaio 2020, Ilsole24ore.
42
A decision of the European Commission, against the opinion of the European Parliament and
against the will of most Member States.
The favourable opinion of the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) was decisive to grant
the authorization which does not include cultivation within the EU territory.
The authorization is valid for 10 years and, as specified by the European communiqué "all
products obtained from this genetically modified soybean will be subject to the strict EU rules
on labelling and traceability".
A more and more evident openness to GMO legumes imported for zootecnichnical feeding, an
issue that is becoming increasingly important given the expansion of pastures and intensive
farming in the EU.
It is therefore necessary, for the purposes of the research question in question, to ask what drives
the EU to persevere in an attitude of closure with respect to products that continue to be
imported in increasingly significant quantities and what are the consequences on the territories
outside the European border of this type of agricultural system increasingly import oriented.
4.2 European outsourcing of environmental and social damage
The increasing openness to imported GMO soybean and to foreign multinationals that produce
it, has reduced the costs of the Union compared to a commodity whose demand is now
increasingly high, but is at the same time symptomatic of strong contradictions with European
policies to protect the environment and mitigate the effects of climate change, starting from the
most recent and most important measure, the Green Deal.
The European Green Deal was approved by the European Parliament on January 15, 2020 and
is the pact through which Europe expresses its objective to bring the economy of its countries
in line with the Paris Agreements, in order to contain the rise in temperatures within two
degrees. Among the proposals of the European Commission there is a new way of producing
and circulating and the attempt to make climate and environmental challenges become
opportunities for growth and not limits.
The Green Deal, however, risks not being as green as it appears and underlying contradictions
may be hidden behind this pact.
In an article published in Nature, written by three researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology, Germany, the authors reveal that the deal could actually result in the export of
their environmental damage to other countries. 58
58
Richard Fuchs, Calum Brown & Mark Rounsevell. Europe’s Green Deal offshores environmental damage to
other nations. 26/19/20, Nature.
43
In fact it is necessary to emphasize that the Green Deal does not set rules on what is imported
and this leaves a legal hole in the plan. Which, in light of the previously discussed discussion
on the growing import of GMO soybeans by the EU and with the awareness of the
environmental and social consequences that the expansion of this agricultural frontier has had
and has in the territories where it is inserted, starting from Argentina just treated, is a question
certainly worthy of note and full of critical issues.
For imports of agricultural products Europe is second only to China.
In 2019, the old continent imported 20% of total crops, mainly soy products. This keeps the
environmental impact of EU agriculture and livestock farming low, but at a cost. Imports come
from countries where environmental protection laws are looser than in Europe and trade
agreements do not require imports to be produced in accordance with sustainability criteria
(Fuchs et al. 2020, Nature).
An example comes from the trade agreement signed in 2019 between Europe and Mercosur,
the common market of South America, whose the main economic players are Argentina and
Brazil. From 1986 to 2016 the European demand for oilseeds, mostly used in animal feed and
biodiesel, doubled.
The largest supplier of oilseeds is Brazil, one of the countries most affected by the
environmental, political and social effects of the expansion of the agricultural frontier of
soybeans and other leguminous plants, whose production is almost entirely destined to foreign
demand, including European demand, and therefore to export.
According to Garmisch researchers, since 1990 European agricultural imports have been
responsible for one third of deforestation linked to global trade. It is estimated that 9 million
hectares were deforested from 1990 to 2008, most of them in the Brazilian Amazon and
Cerrado, the Brazilian tropical savannah, to meet European demand for oilseeds.
If from 1990 to 2014 European forests have witnessed an expansion of 9% (almost 13 million
lions of hectares), in the world 11 million hectares have been deforested to meet European
consumption demand (Fuchs et al. 2020, Nature).
Three-quarters of this deforestation is associated with oilseed crops, produced in Brazil and
Indonesia, regions overflowing with biodiversity and at the same time with the highest carbon
dioxide absorption capacity in the world.
The thesis of the Garmisch researchers is therefore that Europe takes the credit for home-grown
green policies, but in the global sustainability report it actually outsources environmental
damage.
44
The Green Deal, and in particular the Farm to Fork initiative, are set to transform European
agriculture in the next decade. Fertilizer use will have to be reduced by 20 percent and pesticide
use by 50 percent; a quarter of the land will have to be planted with organic crops by 2030, 3
billion trees will have to be planted and 25,000 km of rivers will have to be re-populated. These
are ambitious and opportune objectives, the authors emphasize, but an equally adequate effort
has not been put in place on the commercial front. There are no adequate laws, mechanisms or
criteria to check that sustainability standards are also met by imported products. 59
Also, with regard to pesticides, a topic widely discussed in the previous chapters, it is necessary
to emphasize that the EU applies double standards with regard to the use of some varieties of
products, often prohibited or not used within the European Union border, but imported from
abroad from territories where the use is allowed.
Europe, for example, as already pointed out, imports large quantities of genetically modified
soy and corn from Brazil, Argentina, the United States and Canada. Most of these crops are
herbicide-resistant, such as glyphosate.
On soybeans, the United States uses 34 kg of fertilizer per ton, more than twice the amount
allowed in Europe, 13 kg per ton.
In Argentina, as mentioned in the previous chapter, about 200 million litters of glyphosate-
based herbicide are used in a year.
The debate on the toxicity of the product, between those who consider it harmless and those
who consider it harmful to soil, animal and human health is still in vogue.
As a result, several studies have been carried out over time, leading to thesis for or against its
use and the European rural world, in turn, is divided on the subject.
In this regard, in 2017, in response to the initiative of 1,070,865 EU citizens entitled "Banning
Glyphosate and Protecting People and the Environment from Toxic Pesticides", the European
Commission produced a report in which it communicates the EU's position on the matter.
The initiative invites the European Commission to propose to the EU Member States to:
"1. Banning herbicides based on glyphosate, a substance related to cancer in humans and
ecosystem degradation;
2. Ensure that the scientific evaluation of pesticides for EU regulatory approval is based solely
on published studies commissioned by public authorities rather than the pesticide industry;
59
Richard Fuchs, Calum Brown & Mark Rounsevell. Europe’s Green Deal offshores environmental damage to
other nations. 26/19/20, Nature.
45
3. Set mandatory reduction targets for pesticide use at EU level, with a view to a pesticide-free
future". 60
The European Commission's response to this issue is important for the understanding of the EU
position on the use of herbicides and glyphosate in particular.
The Commission's first response was to stress that current EU rules on pesticides ensure that
only safe active substances and plant protection products that can be used safely are approved
in the EU. These rules also promote low-risk active substances and non-chemical alternatives,
and require measures to ensure the sustainable use of pesticides.
As mentioned in the document, in the National Action Plans, which Member States must present
on the subject, it must be described how they implement the Directive. The plans should contain
objectives, measures and timetables for the reduction of risks and impacts of the use of
pesticides.
The report goes on to say that currently the Common Agricultural Policy supports the
implementation of the directive on the sustainable use of pesticides through measures such as
farm advisory systems (aimed at supporting farmers in the implementation of integrated pest
management), rural development policy and the promotion of organic farming.
With regard to the issue of glyphosate, the Commission explains that following the introduction
of the relevant EU legislation, the use of glyphosate has been authorised since 1 July 2002
following its first scientific review under Directive 91/414/EEC12, which was later repealed by
the current PPP Regulation. It was previously on the market of Member States according to
national rules.
From 2012 to 2017, glyphosate has undergone an updated scientific evaluation to verify
whether it continues to meet the safety criteria of EU legislation.
With regard to the effects of glyphosate on human health, the rapporteur Member State,
Germany, carried out a thorough and transparent assessment of all available data and
information and was subsequently peer reviewed by all other EU Member States and EFSA.61
In March 2015, IARC, the World Health Organization's Agency specializing in oncology and
the detection of carcinogens, published its Monography 12 on glyphosate, concluding that
glyphosate should be classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.
60
COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION on the European Citizens' Initiative "Ban glyphosate and
protect people and the environment from toxic pesticides". Strasbourg, 12.12.2017 C (2017) 8414 final.
61
46
Consequently, during the EU peer review, the Commission asked EFSA to take into account
the IARC monography.
Regarding the assessment of carcinogenicity, EFSA concluded that "it is unlikely that
glyphosate poses a cancer threat to humans".
Furthermore, the ECHA Committee for Risk Assessment concluded by consensus that the
classification of glyphosate as a carcinogen is not justified.
At the basis of the diverging opinion of the IARC, as pointed out in the explanatory note of the
scientific advice mechanism of the Commission, there are the following reasons. The IARC
examined both glyphosate (active substance) and glyphosate plant protection products. The EU
evaluation considered only glyphosate, bacause it is responsibility of the Member States,
according to the EU, to evaluate each plant protection product placed on the market in their
territory.
With respect to ecosystem damage, the EU assessment did not provide any evidence that
glyphosate causes ecosystem degradation when used in accordance with authorisation
conditions and in line with good agricultural practices.
However, since the intended use of glyphosate (and the same applies to other herbicides) is the
elimination of competing plants, there may be an impact on trophic nets, as the Commission
itself admits.
In the light of a thorough review of all available information, the Commission continues, there
is currently no reason to question the scientific assessments of glyphosate carried out in the EU
and its conclusions.
That being said, and considering that the scientific evaluation of glyphosate carried out by
EFSA is fair with regard to human, animal and environmental health, in November 2017 the
Commission submitted to Member States a draft implementing regulation for the renewal of
the approval of the substance for a period of 5 years.
The Commission therefore concludes that it does not have the elements to present to the co-
legislators a proposal to ban glyphosate. However, Member States have the obligation to
evaluate all authorisations of plant protection products containing glyphosate and may decide
to introduce restrictions or bans for some or all of them if justified by data relating to the
particular conditions in their territories.
It is necessary to remember how the IARC study, from which the European Union departs, is
accompanied by thousands of complaints from citizens who have suffered the negative effects
of this substance, addressed to companies such as Monsanto, supplier of GMO crops to the EU,
which has been the key to its privileged position in the international market for 30 years. As
mentioned in the chapter on Monsanto, the company has been protagonist in the worldwide
47
phenomenon of glyphosate decriminalization, including through questionable practices such as
ghost writing and violent attacks against the IARC when it published Monograph 12 on the
carcinogenicity of the substance. Monsanto, in Argentina, United States and beyond, has been
accused and condemned several times over the environmental and human health damage caused
by its glyphosate-based products such as Round up.
In order to analyze the critical points of the European Commission's Report on this issue, it is
necessary to emphasize that the European Directive identifies specific measures that Member
States are required to include in their plans for proper implementation, among them, worthy of
mention in this context are: 1) The prohibition of aerial spraying of herbicides and pesticides;
2) Restricting the use of pesticides in sensitive areas.
The national plans, as mentioned by the Commission, "still show great differences in terms of
completeness and coverage, and most Member States are currently re-examining them.
Although a number of measures have been adopted to encourage IPM, this does not necessarily
guarantee that the relevant techniques are actually applied by professional users".62
First of all, a first criticality that can be identified in the Commission's position is the large part
of responsibility entrusted to individual States on this issue.
In fact, although the Common Agricultural Policy defines the directives on the use of de-
terminated products and identifies the aforementioned bans, there is no real control body, which
is therefore entrusted to the States themselves.
Tangent to the issue, is the second criticality.
The Commission defines the ban on aerial spraying of herbicides, clearly due to the preservation
of citizens living in the surrounding areas and also limits the use of pest killers in ecologically
sensitive areas.
It also defines that glyphosate is not harmful to the health of people and soils if it is used in
limited quantities and with appropriate delivery methods.
The contradiction that lies in these prohibitions is that while it is true that the EU places such
restrictions on the protection of the environment and citizens, this is only valid and required for
production in Europe. In fact, among the discriminating factors that identify which products
can be imported into the EU, there is not the one for which products coming from outside the
EU must be cultivated respecting the various limitations placed in the internal context.
This contradiction therefore creates a system in which the EU is attentive to the environmental
and social criteria of domestic production, while through the import of goods from abroad
62
48
whose production does not respect the canons of protection of the ecosystem and the local
population, feeds an agricultural context, such as South America, in which the expansion of the
agricultural border suitable for export, especially soybeans, continues to exacerbate the already
serious damage on their territories.
It is therefore necessary that indicators on the environmental impact of territories no longer only
take into account the damage caused by domestic production, but also that caused by the
demand for high ecological cost goods projected outside the borders.
It is important, in the final analysis, that the debate on European environmental contradictions
and on the outsourcing of its own ecological damages becomes the protagonist of the next
European agendas, in view of a future in which the environmental, social, cultural and
institutional damages pro- advocated by the expansion of the agro-business frontier acquire the
same importance and the same seriousness regardless of the territory in which they occur.
Conclusions
From the following analysis of the causes and consequences of the expansion of the agricultural
frontier in Argentina, it can be seen that since the 1990s there have been profound changes in
Argentinean society in general. Transformations that, in the rural world, have acquired specific
forms and implications.
What is taking place throughout the Southern Cone, especially in Argentina through the
production of soybeans is a process of concentration of agricultural property in the hands of a
few companies, with the consequent removal of small producers from their plots, crushed by
insurmountable competition.
The governments that have followed one another in the last thirty years, through short-sighted
economic policies, have favored the expansion of the agricultural frontier and the construction
of the bio-hegemony of foreign multinationals. They have also never pushed towards the
inclusion of local actors that was not only formal, or towards policies aimed at mitigating the
consequences caused by this expansion.
As analyzed in the third chapter, the presumed productive efficiency achieved has been realized
on the basis of the natural subsidy granted by the fertile Argentinean Pampas and territories
affected by deforestation, desertification and loss of biodiversity.
On the other hand, those on the other side of the trade border who import crops produced in
these territories, such as the European Union, preach and implement forward-looking and
sustainable policies at home, often forgetting that the products they import come from territories
that do not meet European standards for the protection of the environment and local
49
populations, thus concealing contradictions and critical issues that the EU should include in
future political agendas, in order to remedy this ecological gap.
It is necessary that environmental and social indicators take into account in their balance sheet
not only the negative consequences caused by domestic production, but also those that are
projected outside the borders and affect fragile spaces and territories.
The processes described in this work, reveal some of the critical points of modernity, from the
control of natural resources to the crisis of the role of the nation-state as guarantor of sustainable
management of territories and those who live them daily.
The lack of attention to ecological criteria and social dynamics in the territories that are victims
of the expansion of the agricultural frontier is related to the current prevailing productive model.
A model based on the exclusion of local actors, the expulsion from the economic dynamics of
producers and communities that live in the spaces and the impoverishment of the conditions of
life and work of the workforce. In the final analysis, the contamination of territories and the
outsourcing of environmental and social damage are part of a precarious and deficient system
that applies double standards based on the degree of relevance that each territory assumes in
the rules of the global market. A logic that, through the study and critical analysis of the
underlying contradictions behind this model, must be overcome.
50
Bibliographic references
• Alessio Romeo, ”Ibridi sperimentali, l’Europa riapre il dossier Ogm”. 12 gennaio 2020,
Ilsole24ore
• Andrés E. Carrasco, Norma E. Sánchez, Liliana E. Tamagno (2012) Modelo agrícola e

impacto socio-ambiental en la Argentina: monocultivo y agronegocios. Pag 29-49
• C. Caillabet (2004) Intervista a Adolfo Boy sugli obiettivi della Monsanto nel paese.
Rivista Rel-Uita.
• COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION on the European Citizens' Initiative
"Ban glyphosate and protect people and the environment from toxic pesticides".
Strasbourg, 12.12.2017 C (2017) 8414 final.
• Convention on biological diversity (2014). Status and trends of biodiversity, including

benefits from biodiversity and ecosystem services. https://www.cbd.int/
• D. Aranda (2015) Tierra arrasada: Petrolèo, soja, pasteras y megaminerìa. Pag 179-302
• Delvenne P, et al., The “soy-ization” of Argentina: The dynamics of the “globalized”

privatization regime in a peripheral context, Technology in Society (2013),
• Domínguez, D. y Sabatino (2006) Con la soja al cuello: crónica de un país hambriento

productor de divisas, en Alimonda, H: Los tormentos de la materia. Aportes para una
ecología política latinoamericana. CLACSO, Buenos Aires. Pág. 254-256
• F. Amin Filomeno (2013) How Argentine Farmers Overpowered Monsanto: The

Mobilization of Knowledgeusers and Intellectual Property Regimes. Journal of Politics
in Latin America 3/2013: Pag. 35–71
• G. Cadenazzi (2009). La historia de la soja en Argentina. De los inicios al boom de los

´90. XXVII Congreso de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología. VIII Jornadas
de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Pag. 3-5
• Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Documento de Tenencia de la
Tierra en la Década del '90: El Caso de la Provincia de Buenos Aires.
• Joint EU-US statement. Report of the European Commission 16/04/19
• Lorena Cardin (2013). La comunidad qom Potae Napocna Navogoh (La Primavera) y
el proceso de lucha por la restitución de su territorio. Pag. 5-10
• Ministero de agricultura, ganaderia y pesca, 2019
51
• Ministerio de ambiente y desarollo sostenible de Argentina (2020) Causas e impactos
de la deforestación de los bosques nativos de Argentina y propuestas de desarrollo
alternativas.
• Ministero de Agricultura, Ganaderìa y Pesca de la Naciòn (2013) Relevamiento y

sistematizaciòn de problemas de tierra de los agricultores familiares en Argentina.
• ONG Grain (2004). Monsanto y las regalías semilleras en Argentina

• P.Lapegna (2016) Soybeans and power: Genetically modified crops, enviromental
politics, and Social movements in Argentina. Pag. 42-320
• P. Lapegna (2019) The political economy of the agro‐export boom under the Kirchners:
Hegemony and passive revolution in Argentina. Journal of Agrarian Change. Pag. 314-
325
• P. Lapegna (2007) Transgénicos, desarrollo sustentable y (neo)liberalismo en

Argentina. Actores
sociales y redes transnacionales en la creación de un sentido común. En publicacion:
Cultura y Transformaciones sociales en tiempos de globalización. Perspectivas
latinoamericanas Mato, Daniel; Maldonado Fermín.
• Richard Fuchs, Calum Brown & Mark Rounsevell. Europe’s Green Deal offshores
environmental damage to other nations. 26/19/20, Nature.
• S. Bandieri (2005). Del discurso poblador a la praxis latifundista. Mundo Agrario, vol.
6, nº 11.
• Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la

Educación. Pag. 1
• S. Perez Garcia (2008) INFORME DE INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE LAS

OPERACIONES DE MONSANTO EN ARGENTINA, report n°5. Pag. 3-12
• S. Soria (2015) Políticas indigenistas en la Argentina kirchnerista.
• Íconos, Revista de Ciencias Sociales. Pag. 3-8
• Stéphane Foucart e Stéphane Horel (2017). « Monsanto papers », désinformation

organisée autour du glyphosate. Nel numero del 2 giugno 2017, Le Monde.
52

La Repùblica Sojera. Nicole Mercurio

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

La Repùblica Sojera. Nicole Mercurio

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA

La Repùblica Sojera: origins and consequences of the

1 Historical chronology of agro-export policy in Argentina, from its origins to Macri

2.1 Monsanto p.20

4.2 The European outsourcing of environmental and social damage p.43

Bibliographic references p.5

Chapter 2. Case study of a foreign multinational agro-export company and its

The role of multinational agribusiness companies in Argentina's political economy and in

3.1 Environmental and human, plant and animal health consequences.

Chapter 4. Regulation of soybeans, GMO products and glyphosate in the

4.2 European outsourcing of environmental and social damage

• Andrés E. Carrasco, Norma E. Sánchez, Liliana E. Tamagno (2012) Modelo agrícola e

• Convention on biological diversity (2014). Status and trends of biodiversity, including

• Delvenne P, et al., The “soy-ization” of Argentina: The dynamics of the “globalized”

• Domínguez, D. y Sabatino (2006) Con la soja al cuello: crónica de un país hambriento

• F. Amin Filomeno (2013) How Argentine Farmers Overpowered Monsanto: The

• G. Cadenazzi (2009). La historia de la soja en Argentina. De los inicios al boom de los

• Joint EU-US statement. Report of the European Commission 16/04/19

• Ministero de agricultura, ganaderia y pesca, 2019

• Ministero de Agricultura, Ganaderìa y Pesca de la Naciòn (2013) Relevamiento y

• ONG Grain (2004). Monsanto y las regalías semilleras en Argentina

• P. Lapegna (2007) Transgénicos, desarrollo sustentable y (neo)liberalismo en

• Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la

• S. Perez Garcia (2008) INFORME DE INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE LAS

• S. Soria (2015) Políticas indigenistas en la Argentina kirchnerista.

• Íconos, Revista de Ciencias Sociales. Pag. 3-8

• Stéphane Foucart e Stéphane Horel (2017). « Monsanto papers », désinformation

You might also like