Rural eastern Paraguay used to be full of jungle, small farms, schools and wildlife. Now it is a green sea of soybeans. The families, trees and birds are gone. The schools are empty. The air is filled with the toxic stench of the pesticides like paraquat and 2,4-D used to protect the soy crops. We drove through the sea of soy… return to article
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Reader Comments (16)Page 1 of 1 pagesWhat is happening in Paraguay seems to be the typical consequences of corporate globalization. This involves the destruction of long-standing local economic and ecological systems in order to generate profits for large TNCs whose interests don’t relate to those of most people either north or south of the equator. The TNCs listed in the article that are involved in the creation of the new Soy based agribusiness model in Paraguay are the very same ones who want to monopolize the global seed industry and reduce the world’s nearly one and a half billion farmers to peons of the seed, fertilizer, and pesticide industries. They are also the same group that has contributed to the destruction of more than three quarters of the world’s biodiversity with all the negative ecological consequences.
The income concentrating effects of transnational agribusiness and the WTO rules which promote them will result in more problems for the US like increased immigration, shrinking foreign markets for US exports and increased foreign debt for Latin America. The global income shift to TNCs isn’t worth it. We will all pay the price while gleaning little if any benefit.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 12, 2007 at 5:53 PM Three-quarters of the world’s biodiversity destroyed by the same companies ? You have any refs for this ? I have seen you play fast
and loose with stats many times, so I’d appreciate some documentation here for a change. I have a mixed view on this subject so
I’m not entirely discounting your observations but they seem very hyperbolic. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that this is an exclusively JOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH
trait but yo’ peepul are known to GREATLY exaggerate. Other groups have other vices. What Commie sources do yo’ “facts” come from ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 12, 2007 at 9:42 PM Some ecology group that’s concerned with organic farming. Actually the entire organic farming/ecological sustainability movement believes that about three fourths of the earth’s biodiversity has been killed off mostly by GM seeds that replace varieties of hybrid seeds permanently. Most of this destruction is due to the highly concentrated seed market which aims to reduce global food production to a select group of highly resistant strains of GM seeds which will be controlled by the top six seed companies. The aim is to monopolize the means to produce food on a global scale.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 13, 2007 at 5:55 AM Maybe so but how can we verify this blanket assertion ? And how long has this alleged killing off of three quarters (!) been going on ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 13, 2007 at 3:53 PM The UNFAO found that 75% of the genetic diversity of traditional crop varieties, which numbered in the thousands, were lost to replacement by GM seeds. The promotion of GM seeds, a $23 dollar industry utterly dominated by just six TNCs as of 1999, the year Pioneer HiBred was bought by DuPont for $7.7 billion, was the single biggest contributor to this dangerous trend.According to the Rural Advancement Foundation, approximately 97% of USDA lists have been lost over the past century.
In order to grasp how this “Green Revolution” has impacted the third world we can look at the Phillipines where only two varieties of rice account for 98% of all the area currently sown in rice. Mexico has lost over 80% of its traditional maize varieties while China, which produced over 8,000 varieties of rice produced only 50 by 1970. In India, new transnational corporate controlled patented varieties of grains threaten traditional ones by putting millions of farmers out of business who can’t afford the new seed varieties and the expensive fertilizer and pesticide packages tied to them.
Check out UNFAO and the Rural Advancement Foundation. Also anything by Vandana Shiva is good. She has wriiten extensively on how the concentrateed control of both water resources and GM seeds has eliminated millions of traditional farmers, the very source of agricultural biodiversity, and concentrated land for GM seed cultivation. The real goal of transnational agribusiness is to globalize food markets and transform local agriculture into ecologically destructive monocultural for export. The goal is not feeding the hungry as much as corporate profit and accumulating foreign exchange to pay foreign debts and import goods from the Northern tier economies.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 14, 2007 at 1:45 PM Discredited axe grinding leftist sources, see Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource, Capitalism by George Reisman and the great work of the George C. Marshall Institute, named after the Commie general but they totally debunk global warming. I’ll get some other titles to recommend but Chicago, you LIED about the “holocaust,” Israel/Palestine, the Sudetenland Genocide, the Danzig, WW2, WW1and down the line. You have no credibility at all. NONE. You are a certified Stalinist liar and Jewish Racist.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 15, 2007 at 10:36 PM You are a true mentally damaged retard. The FAO is not a “discredited leftist source” and employs some of the world’s top agricultural experts. The RAF is from South Carolina you moron. Hardly leftist. They’re mostly farmers from the deep south who are sick of being ripped off by big contract agribusiness. Most are rock solid Republicans!! What do your shop worn libertarian sources say about bio-diversity anyhow? When you don’t know anything about a topic you name call and name drop (and always the exact same names). Grow up and take your medication, jerk!!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 16, 2007 at 6:52 PM “LYAAAAHHH ! RAYSHIIISSTTT ! FAYSSSHHIISSTTT ! AUNTEY-SEAMENITE ! NAARRRZZZII ! EVERYONE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA IS A RIGHTIST ! BECAUSE I SAY SO ! I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO DRIVE MY TAXI WITH A LEAKING COLOSTOMY BAG OVER MY HEAD.”
Posted by cabdriverinchicago.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 16, 2007 at 8:49 PM BM,
Instead of posting your childish rantings why don’t you just go to the Monsanto website and read their propaganda about how biodiversity is actually served by GM modified seeds. Yelling the same nonsense over and over is really getting old at this point.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 17, 2007 at 3:09 PM Why would I pay the slightest attention to any reference of yours when you refuse to check out mine ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 17, 2007 at 3:36 PM Because, as I’ve suggested in the above post, the Monsanto website would actually vindicate your argument over mine. You’ve just proven that you are so knee-jerk in your reactions that you don’t even think. For you politics is a mere spinal reflex.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 19, 2007 at 5:08 AM Your comments are what the psychologists call projection and exactly describe your own epistemology.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 19, 2007 at 4:16 PM Conspicuous by it’s absence is any mention of US military bases, as well as the Rev. Moon’s and Bush Family’s recent aquisition of hundreds of thousands of acres in this section of Paraguay/Argentina/Uraguay.
Posted by dalton on Apr 20, 2007 at 1:53 AM Knew about the Bush acquisiton of 28,000 acres in Paraguay near the border but didn’t know Moon was in on it. Moon’s a big Zionist so now I wonder if there’s an Israeli connection here. There usually is when something really stinky is going on.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 20, 2007 at 3:44 PM Your anti-semitism is really showing now. Moon is NOT a zionist and why would anything going on in Paraguay be Israeli related? You’re pathetic. Who’s paying you to disrupt discussion on the progressive blogs?
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 20, 2007 at 8:58 PM Moon IS a strong Christian Zionist, you nut. Check out his Washington Times, check out the lengthy piece on Christian Zionists in the beeble belt nut south in a summer 2002 Mother Jones. AshkeNAZI Jews like yourself are NOT Semites. All Arabs are. Israel backed Somoza and Trujillo and apartheid South Africa and even the Nazi Argentine Junta according to Jane Hunter’s books, she is a Jewess and according to Jacobo Timmerman who fled the Argentine Junta and then later fled Israel. He wrote “There is no business like Shoah Business.”
Posted by blondemike on Apr 22, 2007 at 9:47 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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