The second piece below shows how Monsanto achieves market access in Argentina, meeting any attempt on Argentina's part to regulate GMO commercialisation on its own terms with corporate intimidation. The article in question is from back in 2000 but in 2003 Monsanto put $40m of Argentine investment on hold in order to get what it wanted.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1660
Meanwhile, of course, Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops are destroying Argentina's agriculture, ecology, and economy. (item 3)
1.Monsanto Gets OK to Sell Biotech Corn
2.MONSANTO THREATENS ARGENTINA
3.How GM Crops Are Destroying Argentina
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1.Monsanto Gets OK to Sell Biotech Corn
Associated Press, Wed, Jul. 14, 2004
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/business/technology/9152318.htm
ST. LOUIS - Monsanto Co. has received approval to sell in Argentina corn genetically modified to survive applications of the company's Roundup weedkiller.
The St. Louis-based agricultural biotechnology company said the South American country's government on Tuesday authorized the use of Monsanto's NK603 corn.
The corn will be available for Argentine farmers to plant this fall in limited quantities and should be available more widely in the 2005 and 2006 growing seasons.
Monsanto estimates that its corn products carrying so-called Roundup Ready and other traits in Argentina could reach five million acres.
Roundup Ready soybeans and cotton - as well as corn and cotton varieties genetically modified to resist insects - already were approved for planting in Argentina.
Monsanto shares fell 3 cents to close at $36.27 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
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2.Monsanto threatens Argentina
Date: 13 December 2000
Argentina is constantly portrayed by biotech boosters as hot for this technology. Yet Monsanto's agriculture director for southern Latin America says of Argentina:
"The risk that we're running is that as a country we could be left behind in a technology that we had the opportunity to latch onto first, and now it seems like we want to give it up".
That sounds more like cold feet than hot for GMOs!
But the article below also makes it clear that any attempt on Argentina's part to regulate GMO commercialisation on its own terms will be met with corporate intimidation with the corporate gene giant saying it "may close some operations in Argentina if the government does not loosen restrictions on genetically modified (GM) food production".
Monanto's threats as to what may happen in Argentina, if it doesn't get its way, is highly reminiscent of the way in which Monsanto and Novartis are known to have previously threatened the Republic of Ireland over its resistance to speeding up GM beet approval. In that case, the Gene Giants threatened a withdrawal of all non-GM beet seed to Irish farmers by Novartis, commenting,
"Given the importance of Novartis on the Irish market, this would have serious implications for the Irish sugar beet industry" - a major ag industry in Ireland.
[http://www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/observer1/blackmail.html]
And if this is how Monsanto deals with the likes of Argentina - one of the world's agricultural giants, one can imagine how poorer countries likely to fare at the hands of the corporate bullies.
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Argentine GM policy endangers investment - Monsanto
Reuters News Service, December 13, 2000
BUENOS AIRES - Agribusiness giant Monsanto Co may close some operations in Argentina if the government does not loosen restrictions on genetically modified (GM) food production, a company official said.
Argentina's policy of authorizing new GM products only if they have been approved in European Union endangers Monsanto's projects including an $8 million cotton seed processing plant joint venture, said MiguelPotocnik, Monsanto's agriculture director for southern Latin America.
"This investment is in danger and if (the cotton seeds) don't get approved it could be yet another plant that closes in Argentina," Potocnik told Reuters in a recent interview.
U.S.-based Monsanto produces herbicides such as Roundup, seeds and related genetic trait products to help farmers grow crops with higher yields while controlling weeds, insects and diseases.
The company's "Roundup Ready" cotton has not been authorized by Argentina's Agriculture Ministry, which is trying to balance local interests with the increasing hostility abroad toward GM products.
Organizations like Greenpeace have rallied public sentiment, especially in Europe, against what they derisively describe as "Frankenstein foods" on the grounds that not enough is known about gene-altered crops to deem them safe.
Argentina is the world's second-largest producer of GM crops but concern has grown about their viability as its No. 1 trading partner Brazil has lately stiffened its ban on GM crops and their importation. "The risk that we're running is that as a country we could be left behind in a technology that we had the opportunity to latch onto first, and now it seems like we want to give it up," Potocnik said.
About 90 percent of Argentina's 10 million-hectare soybean crop sprouts from Monsanto's seeds. An Agriculture Ministry spokesman told Reuters recently that Argentina's GM policy had allowed it to gain the upper hand over the United States in exporting corn to Spain.
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3.How GM Crops Destroy the Third World (Case studies from Argentina, Indonesia and India)
By Lim Li Ching
ISP Briefing, 29th April 2004, House of Commons, London
http://www.indsp.org/chinghoc.php
EXCERPT:
Argentina: 'World's breadbasket' now empty?
Argentina's experience with GM crops is particularly telling, as it was the first developing country to commercially grow GM crops, particularly Roundup Ready (RR) soya, and has the longest experience in doing so, since 1996. It is currently the world's second largest producer of GM crops, after the US.
After 8 years of growing RR soya, the adverse environmental, health and socio-economic impacts are increasingly clear. Once known as the 'world's granary', Argentina is experiencing hunger, internally displaced rural populations, and the loss of traditional food crops.
Regional economies for local food products, such as vegetable gardens and dairy farms, have given over productive land to soya production. The food crops that Argentina used to produce have been wiped out by a flood of soya, whose production grew 74.5% between 1996 and 2002. In the same period, official figures show decreases in the area sown with the following food crops: Rice: -44.1%, corn: -26.2%, wheat: -3.5% [1]. The country now imports what it used to export.
The exponential expansion of concentrated and large land areas planted to RR soya, exacerbated by the need to service foreign debt by catering to the soya export market, has led to this situation [1]. Soya production has increased from an area of 38,000 hectares in 1970 to approximately 13 million hectares in 2003, in conjunction with the spread of no-till farming, which the RR system fits with perfectly. Practically all the soya produced in Argentina now is genetically modified and most of it is exported as oil and animal feed.
RR soya has intensified the existing model of export-oriented, large-scale and industrialised agriculture, resulting in a shift away from traditional and sustainable mixed and rotation farming, threatening food security for many Argentineans [2]. This model is enriching a few but relegating many to poverty.
In the last decade, small farming families have been forced off the land, unable to compete with large farms. Twenty-four million acres of land belonging to bankrupted small farmers are about to be auctioned off by the banks [3]. Peasants in Santiago del Estero, North Argentina, who have been living there for generations, claim they are being threatened by big landowners linked to seed companies and supported by local police and paramilitary-like forces. To intimidate the peasants, they set fire to the forests while shooting around the people in order to take their land for planting RR soya.
While the biotech industry promised increased yields and less pesticide use, the reality has been very different. RR soya does not have increased yields - studies in the US have documented an average 5-10% decrease ('yield drag') in RR soya yields [4]. The increase in Argentinean soya production is due largely to an increase in acerage of land planted to RR soya. This has led to a replacement of other crops with soya or has used more forest areas, contributing to deforestation [2].
RR soya requires more, not less, herbicide than conventional soya. In Argentina, herbicide use on RR soya is more than double use on conventional varieties [4]. And Monsanto's business in Argentina has everything to do with sales of Roundup, used in conjunction with RR soya. In fact, the company did not initially charge royalties for its GM seed. Its strategy there seemed to have been to turn a blind eye to the traditional practice of saving seed, allowing farmers to multiply RR soya and thus flooding Argentinean fields with the crop [1]. On the other hand, its patent on glyphosate was in force in Argentina since 1996.
And while Chinese-produced generics did halve glyphosate costs, in mid-2002 Monsanto sued 13 small companies selling Chinese glyphosate, forcing them to stop importing the herbicide. The price of Monsanto's formulation is almost double that of the generics. This translates into extra costs for farmers. Furthermore, the production costs for RR soya are higher than for conventional soya. The cost per hectare of group IV no-till high tech soy in the north of Buenos Aires was $214.7 using regular seed, and $243.4 for RR seed. The gross margin for RR soya is $288.9 per hectare, compared to $314.6 for regular seed [1].
Meanwhile, weeds have multiplied, as tolerance and resistance to glyphosate have increased, resulting in more frequent herbicide applications using higher spray concentrations. The need to control difficult weeds, including RR soya itself after harvest, has led to the use of toxic older herbicides, such as 2,4 D and Paraquat, banned in many countries [1]. In a newspaper advertisement, Syngenta says, "soya is a weed", in reference to the RR soya volunteers left behind from prior harvests, which grow during the non-planting season. In order to solve this "weed" problem, they promote the use of the highly toxic Paraquat (trade name Gramoxone), marketed by Syngenta, together with Gesaprim (active ingredient atrazine) [5].
Planes are often used to spray herbicides on RR soya, but with devastating impacts on the health of local populations and on their environment, livestock and food crops. Studies carried out by the University of Formosa Province reported serious health problems in peasant communities due to pesticide fumigation on RR soya fields [3].
A recent report in the New Scientist [6] quotes local farmer Sandoval Filemon from Colonia Loma Senes, North Argentina: "The poison got blown onto our plots and into our houses" Straight away our eyes started smarting. The children's bare legs came out in rashes." "Almost all of our crops were badly damaged. I couldn't believe my eyes," says Sandoval's wife, Eugenia. Over the next few days and weeks chickens and pigs died, and sows and nanny goats gave birth to dead or deformed young. Months later banana trees were deformed and stunted and were still not bearing edible fruit. The culprit? Neighbouring farms planting RR soya, forced to drench their land with a mixture of powerful herbicides to combat resistant weeds.
In a stark illustration of the biotech industry's vision for Argentina and the region, a Syngenta advertisement in the Argentine La Nación newspaper on 27 December 2003 shows a map of the "República Unida de la Soja" (United Soya Republic) " a territory spanning Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil - that is covered by RR soya [5].
To add insult to injury, food aid programmes for the poor ('Soja Solidaridad') are based on soya, which when eaten in excess, can have inhibitory effects on iron, calcium, zinc and B12 vitamin uptake. A few years ago, Argentina used to produce varied and healthy food for eight times its population. Now, in the 'beef country,' the poor are being fed with crops used for animal feed in developed countries [7].