Agribusinessbolivia
… They forced us to go the route to catastrophe at the hands of multinationals, the agribusiness elite in Bolivia and, also, a chain of smaller soybean producers; along with the existence of increasingly marginalized rural workers, and indigenous territories and badly affected peasant family agriculture ...
https://chaskiclandestina.org/
Bolivia in the agroextractivist whirlpool. Transgenics and the new offensive of the state, multinationals and agribusiness.
In the midst of quarantine by COVID-19, on May 8, 2020, the transitional government of Añez, gave way to the evaluation of GMOs for soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton and sugar cane, implementing the state policy that in the last fifteen years benefited agroextractivism. The state-capital alliance is renewed and multinational companies such as Monsanto-Bayer, Bioceres come with it, with their genetically modified and agro-toxic seeds. The small peasant and indigenous production that uses and protects native seeds, collectives and organizations that oppose this new attack on comprehensive health and food sovereignty have stood up against this offensive.
On March 18, 2019, the government of Evo Morales, along with private entrepreneurs and the Association of Oilseed and Wheat Producers (ANAPO), an affiliate of the powerful Eastern Agricultural Chamber, signed an agreement to allow the brief evaluation of two GMO soybean seeds (INTACTA and HB4) resistant to glyphosate and glufosinate ammonium, in order to produce the so-called “biodiesel”, according to the “new era of biofuels” in Bolivia and the “ethanolazo” decreed by MAS 2018.
It was a second big step for the agribusiness sectors in Bolivia, after the first one that took place in July 2005, during the transitional presidency of Eduardo Rodriguez Veltzé, who approved the use of the transgenic soybean RR 40-3-2 [1] .
Soybean Producers Conference, March 2019 (Photo: ANF)
The representatives of ANAPO, the Agricultural Chamber of Small Producers of the East, (CAPPO), and the Single Federation of Peasant and Producer Workers of the Four Northern Provinces, who had signed a statement that March 2019, demanding the approval of the use of seeds transgenics, expressed their satisfaction at the new achievement of approval of transgenic evaluation for the production of “biodiesel”. However, they announced that they would also seek the go-ahead for new GMO events for corn, cotton, and sugar cane:
The executive secretary of the producers of the northern Santa Cruz, Deisy Choque, [and candidate for deputy for the MAS] said that it is expected that in a short time the decree will be enacted allowing the use of these biotechnological events of the grain in the summer campaign […] For the president of the Small Producers Agricultural Chamber (CAPPO), Isidoro Barrientos, this measure is a fundamental advance for Bolivian agriculture, but work will continue to access genetically improved seeds for corn, cotton and sugar cane plantations of sugar.
The events of October and November 2019, temporarily stopped the requests and negotiations that the producers were supporting, which resumed this 2020, when in March of this year the transitional regime of Añez authorized the National Biosafety Committee to continue the evaluation for seed HB4 and other transgenic seeds. Business is business and continues no matter what government it is.
On March 6, 2020, in a brief press release, the Vice Ministry of Environment, Biodiversity, Climate Change and Forest Management and Development, as National Competent Environmental Authority (AACN), announced that the National Biosafety Committee had accepted the evaluation of the HB4 transgenic event, based on Supreme Decree 3874 approved by MAS on April 17, 2019.
MONSANTO and Bioceres: Business and state alliances for the health of the population
The introduction of HB4 seed is directly linked to global mega-companies that set the pace and geopolitics of the capitalist “agri-food industry”. In February 2019, the Argentine company Bioceres and ANAPO had presented HB4 seed in Bolivia, resistant to drought and announced as a great alternative for soy producers in the country.
Bioceres is the Argentine company that made a public-private alliance with experts from the UNL – National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), from Argentina, creating INDEAR, which is in charge of “providing R&D services to facilitate the development of new technologies and pro
Pipelines from Bioceres and from companies outside the group ”, an institution that Bioceres was finally able to acquire in 2009. As early as 2004, the CONICET and UNL team of researchers, business partners with Bioceres, patented a genetic construct that contained the sunflower gene HAHB-4 and that it was used to make soy seeds more tolerant to situations of water stress and salinity. In 2012, and after trials by Biotech, and some “enhancements,” the modified HB4 gene was patented and licensed in favor of Bioceres. The resistance of genetically modified seed was classified as a “revolution” for the soy sector, and in 2018 after having the approval of state institutions in Argentina, it announced that it would be launched to producers, presenting “HB4 technology” in association with the company Rizobacter, and that it is accessible fulfilling the requirements that the companies demand.
In 2018, the multinational MONSANTO-BAYER became a partner of Bioceres, with around 5% of the share capital, marking the triumphal entry of new drought resistant seeds, given the conditions in the world caused by climate change, announce the Business. Paradoxically, monocultures such as soybeans that use transgenic seeds and pesticides are a contributing part of deforestation and therefore of climate change.
Trigal GEnetics, another joint venture between Bioceres and French company Florimond Desprez, develops HB4 wheat seed. From 2018 to now, they present not only HB4 soy and its pesticide, Prominens, to Argentine producers, but also its genetic development for wheat, considering this crop even more profitable than soy, as it is new to the incursion with the use of transgenics.
In this network of corporate alliances between Bioceres and various companies for the research and development of transgenics, agrochemicals and biotechnological inputs for agribusiness, it has thus begun to commercialize the GM4 transgenic seeds, as the excellent business it represents for these companies. Governments of countries such as Brazil, Paraguay and the United States, from the beginning of 2019 until now, approved the use of the HB4 event, marketed by Verdeca, the joint venture product of the Bioceres alliance and the North American Arcadia Biosciences, while waiting for the seed of HB4 soybeans were approved for use by China. The executives of the Bioceres company enthusiastically indicated that they would end 2019 by billing 150 million dollars [27].
This is mainly the information that companies have made public, and they have lobbied with it, but they have not spread the same way to the general public, and as part of that “revolution” for soyeros, that the genetic event HB4 is resistant to glyphosate and glufosinate ammonium. Both pesticides, questioned by peasant and social organizations not only in Argentina but throughout the world. Glufosinate-ammonium is the active ingredient of the pesticide commercially produced in Argentina under the name of Prominens ”.
Fumigated
Prominens, 20% ammonium glufosinate, is produced by the Argentine company A.C.A. in alliance with Bioceres, it eliminates a wide range of weeds, and is considered by defenders of transgenics as an advance for the national industry in that country.
Fumigation of pesticides in soybean plantations (Photo: “Journey to the fumigated villages” of Pino Solanas)
A 2009 Greenpeace report notes that glufosinate, marketed by the Bayer company, is considered dangerous to humans and the environment:
Compared to other herbicides, glufosinate is a toxic pesticide, criticized by governments, and the use of which represents a considerable risk to farmers, causes damage to insects in surrounding areas and can be dangerous for consumers by eating foods that contain residues of the herbicide.
Bayer had to announce in 2012 the withdrawal from the market of pesticides such as “Liberty” in Germany, which were based on glufosinate, but in turn announced that they would export it to non-European countries, while testing on animals that fall into the claws of these industries, they presented, before glufosinate doses, convulsions, death of brain cells and embryonic malformations. In the same way, the same company Bayer announces that BASTA, a pesticide based on ammonium glufosinate could be dangerous for “aquatic organisms”. In countries like Argentina since about 2010, ammonium glufosinate was presented as a new alternative to glyphosate, but, as the renowned late researcher Andrés Carrasco warned, it was actually a much more dangerous pesticide than glyphosate and that it would be used thereafter, just as it happened a few years later.
In 2019, social organizations in Argentina addressed the danger of the introduction of HB4 transgenics in wheat production, and the risk
representing its herbicide, ammonium glufosinate. In the DECLARATION TO SAY NO TO GMO WHEAT, researchers from the same CONICET, affected by the spraying of glyphosate, coordinators and environmental associations and against environmental pollution, in a long list, declared:
Some business sectors, officials and the science and technology system support the lie of the decrease in the consumption of agrochemicals due to the spread of transgenic varieties. They do it even though they know they have to lie and hide information for that, because they still do millionaire businesses.
Who does not know the dramatic images of the fields sprayed by glyphosate in Argentina, and the poisoning of entire populations as a result of these sprays?
The researcher of Productivity Biosphere Environment, (PROBIOMA), Miguel Crespo, explained since March 2019, that in Bolivia, if the GM soy previously authorized in the country, used between 3.5 to 4 liters per hectare of herbicide, the soy event HB4 would use eight liters per hectare, an alarming fact for regions that already suffer from soil contamination due to the enormous use of pesticides, which mainly come from China, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
Data on increased imports of agrochemicals in Bolivia, PROBIOMA
Bolivia had governments that opted to support the entry of transgenics and agro-toxins, with the paradigmatic case of MAS, and increased the use of pesticides by 150% from 2001 to 2017. The data in Santa Cruz show, as Crespo points out, the use 14.8 million kilos / liters of herbicides imported only in the soybean area, of which 10.9 million kilos / liters are glyphosate. The imminent arrival of ammonium glyphosate from the hands of Bioceres and Verdeca, is a blow not only for the already contaminated soils, slopes and population, but for the health of the entire population in general.
If we add to this the business petition and the government’s consent for the brief evaluation for the Intacta technology of soybean seeds belonging to MONSANTO, not only for the production of biodiesel as the MAS government had accepted, as well as the state approval for the Using modified seed varieties for wheat, maize, cotton, and sugar cane, we are talking about a budding ecological and social disaster.
Not only that, it is evident, that after the astronomical data on business profits, there is a piece of information not taken into account in the official propaganda of “development” of governments and companies: MASS DEFORESTATION in several countries, which requires agro-extraction to expand the monocultures, and that imply the disappearance of entire ecosystems and species such as bees and other natural pollinators.
Pandemic and integrated: the global monoculture system against diversified crops of peasant production
Deforestation in Bolivia was carried out through its most visible, brutal and disastrous, as well as blatant effect: the fires in the Bolivian Chiquitanía in 2019, which occurred especially in the department of Santa Cruz, deflagrations that have behind them a series of Legal measures issued by the MAS government, which allowed clearing and expansion of the agricultural frontier, in favor of extensive livestock sectors and soybean producers.
Fires in La Chiquitanía, 2019 (Photo: The Duty)
The tragedy of hundreds of homeless and probably charred jaguars in large areas devastated by the flames, entire herds of species consumed by fire, desolate and ash indigenous territories, on the 5.3 million hectares burned and offered to the altar of private interests , are part of the consequences of a fierce agro-corporate policy that promises “food security”, when in reality, due to the data presented by researchers such as Crespo and Gonzalo Colque, this situation represents the exact opposite: Bolivia, being a mega-diverse country In fauna, flora and food products, its production of cereals such as wheat, tubers, roots, fruits, vegetables and fodder has decreased dramatically, while the privatized production of oilseeds and industrials (soybeans) has grown. This has food security what Monsanto-Bayer has as a philanthropic association. The quality of food has NOT been improved, which brings its immediate correlation to the health of the population.
Decrease in food production in Bolivia in relation to the production of oilseeds and industrial crops, soybeans, 1984-2019 (Infogram by Miguel Crespo, presentation in the framework of the webinar “Transgenics, an attack against socio-environmental health and the rights of peoples )
But businesses are not quarantined.
On April 30, the presidential representative in Santa Cruz, Arturo Murillo, met with the representatives of ANAPO, who expressed:
We have had a meeting with Minister Arturo Murill
or to send our clamorous request, that the use of biotechnology in soybean, corn, wheat and cotton crops be approved; since small producers have been going through a very difficult situation, due to the losses we have due to drought ”.
Almost at the same time, again, representatives of small oilseed producers from the Integrated North who are part of the peasant union federations in Santa Cruz, demanded the approval of the use of transgenic seeds.
Eight days later, on May 8, the transitional government granted through Supreme Decree 4232 what the producers of the agro-business had asked for so much: the authorization to the National Biosafety Committee to establish abbreviated procedures for the evaluation of transgenic events for corn, sugar cane, cotton, wheat and soy.
The case of corn is still dramatic, although we already knew about its production with illegal transgenic seed in the country, we still have, at least, 70 types of native corn, whose seeds were obtained after hundreds of years of care and knowledge of indigenous peoples who transformed corn into a basis of our diet. The willkaparu corn in the highlands and valleys is used for local refreshments and in the famous api tojorí and is indicated for children because it has much more calcium; the black avatiu (corn, in guaraní) is harder, and yellow corn is better used to make masses, all in a land management with rest and rotation of soils, next to the corn it is planted the zucchini or zucchini … And despite all our knowledge and exquisite colors and flavors, even so, the evaluation for transgenic corn seeds created in shady laboratories allied to the agribusiness business was approved this May.
In an increasingly extended discussion about the responsibility of the capitalist system with the appearance of a pandemic like that of COVID-19, – the capitalocene, as Jason Moore would call it. The economic agenda of our country is moving precisely in the direction of policies that cause this historical health crisis, because, in terms of those policies, we were and are a contributing part of the eco-social crisis that we are suffering now more than ever.
However, every day since we began to comply with the quarantine, we have experienced in our own flesh the way in which we are connected and the extent to which we are dependent on the small peasant production that reaches the markets, with its own dynamics and conflicts over the increasing use of other pesticides, and of agroecological producer associations. Such diversified production, in many cases is still linked to rotational land management and agricultural techniques that do not involve the use of machinery, using native seeds.
Agroecological producers and small producers, social organizations, institutes, activist groups and many more throughout the country issued a joint statement that strongly reject the approval of soybean events. We warn, together with the claim of the agro-ecological producers, that the entry of transgenic seeds and pesticides gives a strong boost to agrarian extractivism [2] that destroys, occupies, monopolizes and depletes territories and lands; and it is a direct attack on native seeds, those who care for and reproduce them, the population that depends on small agricultural production.
The state, and governments such as the Mesa, Rodríguez Veltzé, Morales and Añez, imposed and impose us to go the route of the catastrophe with the help of multinationals, the agribusiness elite in Bolivia and, also, a chain of soybean producers more little ones; along with the existence of increasingly marginalized rural workers, and indigenous territories and peasant family agriculture greatly affected by the agrarian changes that involve the connection of the country as an exporter of raw materials to the capitalist mega food and agrarian industry on the planet. Everything in a conjuncture like the current one, which demands that other forms of production not dependent on monopolies can be strengthened and carried out. Those urgent and different proposals, it is already very clear, will only come from the struggles of the small producers and the population that knows what it means to put at risk with agrochemicals and transgenics, as has been done all these years, what remains of our diversity, our health; and to measure the importance of a respectful interdependence with other species and ecosystems.
Food is not a profit-making business or partisan political loot, comprehensive health is a right, forests and jungles are irreplaceable,
FREE FOOD, FREE SEEDS !!
NOTES
[1] The transitional president Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé elevated the Multiministerial Resolution of April 7, 2005, to the rank of Supreme Decree, https://www.lexivox.org/norms/BO-DS-28225.html
[2] See the excellent research study
The Free 