The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

in argentina: the soybeans of hunger 269Welcome to the kingdom of GMOs! “Technicians”—often day laborerswithout protective gear who poison themselves for miserable wages—turnedup one Saturday morning and sprayed until Sunday morning. “It was veryhot that day and there was a strong wind in the region,” recalled FelipeFranco, who farmed about twenty-five acres. “The product is very volatileand it drifted for about 400 yards.” Twenty-three families who had takenrefuge in their cinder-block houses were contaminated. “When I got there,”Castellán told me, “their eyes were red and they had large spots on theirfaces and torsos. Many of them had violent headaches and nausea and complainedof hot flashes and dry throats.” Some of them never recovered, suchas an old woman who was treated for eight months in Buenos Aires and stillcomplains of unbearable bone and joint pain. The community asked theprovincial government health services to write a report, but they concludedthat lack of hygiene was the cause of all the problems. The families filed suitin the court in El Colorado, but the case bogged down because there was nohealth report. Only Castellán agreed to prepare a scientific description ofthe damage caused to the crops.“We lost everything,” said Franco. “The manioc, sweet potatoes, and cottonwere devastated. The chickens and ducks died; some sows aborted, and theothers produced scrawny piglets. The day of the spraying the plow horses haddiarrhea and threw themselves on the ground; some of them died.”Castellán took photographs and samples of the affected plants, which hehad analyzed by a laboratory at the University of the Littoral in Santa Fé. “Ithought about it a lot before taking on this work,” he admitted, “because Iknew that I was taking risks.”“All the agronomists in the Ministry of Economy and Production refused,”Franco confirmed. “We had to confront the police and the politicians whowanted to keep us quiet. Some neighbors gave up filing a complaint and decidedto leave and go to the slums of Formosa.”“Monsanto says that transgenic soybeans can coexist with food crops.What do you think?” I inquired.“It’s impossible,” answered Castellán, “especially in areas like this one,where small producers are surrounded by large spreads of GMOs. If somethinglike this were to happen again, I don’t know how many small producerswould stay on the land.”Franco went on: “The problem is also the purpose of this productionmodel. People who grow transgenic soybeans have a purely commercial aim;