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News | The Transgenization of Latin America

To the cynical, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was put in place so that the USA could off-load its GM crops, which no one else will take, onto vulnerable Latin American countries. Indeed, Greenpeace estimates that the six million tons of US maize imported annually into Mexico are 40-60% transgenic. GM commodity crops are all heavily subsidised in the US, making them a very expensive export failure.

However, in January this year, George Bush made an announcement which sparked a chain of events with far-reaching implication. To move the US away from dependence on Middle Eastern oil, the President has formed a dramatic plan to cut America's use of petrol by 20% over the next decade. To achieve this, he ramped up the target for production of alternative fuels to 35 billion gallons a year by 2017. This is a five-fold increase on the previous target and will require alternative fuel producers to increase their current output by a factor of seven.

In America, the dominant alternative fuel is ethanol, the commonest source of ethanol is maize and the State which grows the most maize is Iowa. Iowa already has 21 ethanol-production facilities which account for almost half of the US' entire entire output, and there are more in the pipeline. If things go to plan, Iowa will soon turn from an exporter of maize throughout America and around the world to an importer.

Even before any of this has started to happen, the price of maize is soaring: 126% in February and the expectation is that it can only keep rising. Farmers in Latin America have suddenly found a gap in the market which their maize can fill. This market promises to be long-term, insatiable and lucrative, and no one cares if it's GM. Soya seems set to follow suit.

Having found an ideal way to get rid of US dependence on those pesky Middle Eastern countries, establish GM crops once and for all in the home of maize, and feeling a need to a dispel anti-American and anti-biotech sentiment, especially in the growing influence on the region of the Venezuelan President, George Bush set out a on a tour of Latin America to forge some strategic alliances.

The situation in most of the countries the President visited seems to be one of regulatory contradictions and a faltering grip on the wheel.

In Mexico, it is a crime to plant GM seed, but more and more licenses are issued every year for experimental planting. Big corn growers boast they have been sowing transgenic maize for years without permission. Cheap GM maize is imported from America to supply the staple tortilla, even by companies which have pledged not to do so. In the land where maize was traditionally venerated as a divine crop, the National Agriculture and Livestock council has been petitioning the government to lift its ban on GM seed, as has the National Association of Supermarkets and Retail Stores which is controlled by Wal-Mart, one of Mexico's number one supplier of tortillas and its largest employer.

Chile has no law which prohibits the growing of GM crops and has not signed the international Protocol of Biosecurity which monitors GMO biosafety. Its Department of Agriculture has ruled that transgenic crops cannot be grown for human consumption, but growing them for research and export is permitted.

The President of Brazil recently declared that another source of biofuel, GM soya, would be produced for vehicles' consumption while “good soya” will be reserved for humans. One Brazilian engineer said “We have 80 million hectares in the Amazon that are going to be converted into the Saudi Arabia of biodiesel.”

Colombia is about to open the floodgates to GM corn, GM cassava,GM rice,GM roses, GM sugarcane and GM coffee. Its Minister of Agriculture insists that there have been regional, controlled biosafety assessments and that follow up studies will be conducted. Colombian NGOs say simply that “The biosafety policies and rules in the country are nonsense.”

Argentina has been hooked by GM for some years, although by refusing to recognise patents has proved a slippery customer for the biotech industry (see SILLY SEASON – News, December 2006). It has recently established incentives to expand its GM soya cultivation even further for biodiesel use.

The people in, at least, some of these countries are not being led up Bush's garden path willingly. During his whistlestop visit of less than 24 hours in Brazil, he was welcomed with demonstrations, mainly by women, in cities across the country. Guatemalan popular leaders and farmers have voiced clear opposition, stating: “this project would cause a devastating crisis because it would wipe out production of basic grains in a country where 70 percent of population live on agriculture.”

OUR COMMENT

The theory behind the benefits of the NAFTA is that foreign investment is attracted into the country while experts are expanded. The opening up of the market and increasing price of maize and other biofuel crops is seen as a route out of poverty for many struggling Latin American farmers. Thus, poor countries should become the commodity suppliers instead of the dumping grounds for unwanted produce, and a stable economy should develop.

This may work in the short-term.

The long-term reality is that countries which could easily be self-sufficient in food will have a future irrevocably linked to feeding foreign cars, and find their land damaged beyond repair by intensive high-tech farming, the rich getting richer and the poor getting hungrier. More importantly, the basis of the biofuel-to-save-the-world plan is questionable: check out BIOFUELS: THE SUMS DON'T ADD UP – News, May 2007.

If you are concerned, check out www.regenwald.org for global action on threats to the global environment.

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