The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

286 the world according to monsantoculture without farmers. Family farming the way we do it provides work forfive people on every two acres cultivated, while RR soybeans employs onlyone full-time worker for fifty acres.* In the long run, judging by its actions,Monsanto’s aim is to control the production and the food of the world, andthat’s why it wants to prevent us from doing our job. We don’t want thetransgenic model, because it’s criminal: it pollutes the environment, destroysnatural resources, and creates unemployment, poverty, insecurity, andviolence. It makes us dependent on the outside for something as basic asfood. It kills life, but once it’s settled in, it’s very difficult to go back. That’swhy we have to struggle, for us and most of all for the future of our children.”The Soy DictatorshipOn January 23, 2007, Tomás Palau met me in a house about a hundredmiles from Asunción, where he had adopted the habit of retiring to read andwrite far from the uproar of the capital. That day, the sociologist who specializesin agrarian questions was beginning an article on the “United SoyRepublic,” an advertising slogan launched in early 2004 by Syngenta, Monsanto’sSwiss competitor. In the ad, which had been distributed throughoutthe Southern Cone, you could see a green map linking Bolivia, Paraguay,Brazil, and Argentina, whose outline formed a soybean with the title“República Unida de la Soja.” “Soy knows no borders,” explained the secondpage, which sang the praises of a technical assistance service of the companysupplying fertilizer and phytosanitary products to producers of RRsoybeans.“You can really say soybeans have taken over the Southern Cone,” saidPalau, “because now Monsanto’s GMOs cover 100 million acres in the fourcountries shown on the map. But this staggering expansion, that has comeat the expense of small farmers in the region, represents more than a mereagricultural phenomenon; it is also a real hegemonic political program. Andin that sense, Syngenta’s advertising slogan is perfectly right; it’s even a confession.”Palau explained that, in his opinion, “Monsanto does now controlthe agricultural and trade policy of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, and*In Argentina, figures supplied by the Agriculture Ministry indicate one paid position for five hundredacres cultivated.