The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

270 the world according to monsantothey don’t live where they farm, so they don’t have to suffer the collateraldamages. But we produce in order to live. We pay attention to the environmentand the quality of what we produce, because we consume it or sell itin the market. This transgenic technology does not serve the farmer butan economic enterprise whose promoters are prepared to do anything toget rich.”Expulsion and DeforestationMilli is a small rural community of ninety-eight families living in an area ofseven thousand semi-arid acres located about thirty-five miles from Santiagodel Estero in northern Argentina. You get there over a red dirt potholed roadthat winds through a brush-covered plain from which spring a few quebrachos,trees whose wood is so valuable that they are threatened with disappearance.This landscape is typical of the Gran Chaco region, which stretches tothe Bolivian border.“Here it’s simply called el monte,” said Luis Santucho, the lawyer for thepeasant organization Mocase, when I met him in April 2005. “Before GMOscame, no one coveted this poor land, where thousands of small farmers haveled a self-sufficient life for several generations.” Santucho was eager to haveme meet the community leaders of Milli, whose survival was threatened bythe appetite of soybean producers, who had constantly been extending theagricultural frontier further north. A year before my visit, a provincial judgehad turned up with armed men and bulldozers. “This is community land,with no property deeds,” Santucho explained, “but with soybean money allkinds of skulduggery is possible.” That day the population of Milli was ableto drive off the assailants by blocking the roads. The sojeros then changedtactics. They tried to divide the community by offering to pay cash fortwenty-five acres to some families, who hesitated because they’d neverimagined having so much money.“That stirred up a lot of trouble,” said Luis, “but we didn’t accept, becausethis is community land, it doesn’t belong to anyone in particular. Andwhere would we have gone? Life is hard here, but we have enough to eatevery day.” Chickens, ducks, and a litter of black pigs were running aroundthe beaten-earth farmyard. Near the creek behind the little hut a cow and ahorse were grazing. Every family was growing manioc, potatoes, and a little