The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

in argentina: the soybeans of hunger 259“Biotechnologies make possible harvests of better quality, higher productivity,and sustainable agriculture protecting the environment.” 2“The introduction of GMOs into Argentina came about with no public oreven parliamentary debate,” according to Walter Pengue, an agricultural engineerat the University of Buenos Aires who specializes in the improvementof plant genetics and whom I met in Buenos Aires in April 2005. 3 “There isstill no law regulating their marketing, and civil society, which is not evenrepresented on the Conabia, is kept out of any decisions. After they were authorizedin 1996, RR soybeans spread through Argentina at an absolutelyunprecedented speed in the history of agriculture: an average of more thantwo million acres a year. We now have a veritable green desert devouring oneof the world’s breadbaskets.”The Magic SeedsAs soon as you head north out of Buenos Aires you encounter a stunningsight: as far as the eye can see are soybeans and more soybeans, sometimesinterrupted by pastures with large herds of grazing cows. In the southern autumnmonth I was there, the harvest was already well along and Ruta Nacional9 was jammed with trucks shuttling between the silos of soybeansand the ports on the Río Parana. This is the heart of the pampas, the vastlegendary plain of Argentina that covers 20 percent of the national territory,250,000 square miles bordered on the north by the Chaco region, the eastby the Río Parana, the south by the Río Colorado, and the west by the Andes.As fertile as the U.S. corn belt, the llanura pampeana is one of the bestpasturelands in the world and since the nineteenth century has been an areaof intense agricultural development where, until the arrival of GMOs, thecrops were grains (corn, wheat, sorghum), oil-producing plants (sunflowers,peanuts, soybeans), and fruits and vegetables, not to mention milk production,which was so well developed that the area was known as the “milkbasin.” In the national imagery, the pampas were the country’s pride, able toproduce food for ten times its population and therefore for export. “Cultivatingthe soil is serving the country,” says a poster at the entrance to theheadquarters of the Argentine Rural Society.The man who met me after I had driven for five hours was from a true