Miguel Altieri and Walter Pengue
In Latin America, the frontiers to soybean production are being pushed back aggressively in all directions at a breathtaking rate. Driven by export pressures and supported by government incentives, soybean fields are taking over forests and savannah in an unprecedented manner. The implications of the monoculture model and its supporting machinery for the environment, farmers and communities are discussed below.
In
2005, the biotech industry and its allies celebrated the tenth
consecutive year of expansion of genetically modified (GM) crops. The
estimated global area of approved GM crops was 90 million hectares, a
growth of 11% over the previous year (see map on p14). In 21 countries,
they claim, GM crops have met the expectations of millions of large and
small farmers in both industrialised and developing countries;
delivering benefits to consumers and society at large through more
affordable food, feed and fiber that are more environmentally
sustainable. [1]
It
is hard to imagine how such expansion in GM crops has met the needs of
small farmers or consumers when 60% of the global area of GM crops is
devoted to herbicide-tolerant crops. In developing countries, GM crops
are mostly grown for export by big farmers, not for local consumption.
They are used as animal feed to produce meat consumed mostly by the
wealthy.
The Latin America countries
growing soybean include Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and
Uruguay. The expansion of soybean production is driven by prices,
government and agro-industrial support, and demand from importing
countries, especially China, which is the world’s largest
importer of soybean and soybean products. Brazil and Argentina
experienced the biggest growth rates in GM soybean expansion in 2005. [2] The expansion is accompanied by
massive transportation infrastructure projects that destroy natural
habitats over wide areas, well beyond the deforestation directly caused
by soybean cultivation. In Brazil, soybean profits justified the
improvement or construction of eight industrial waterways, three
railway lines and an extensive network of roads to bring inputs and
take away produce. These have attracted private investment in logging,
mining, ranching and other practices that severely impact on
biodiversity that have not been included in any impact assessment
studies. [3]
In
Argentina, the agro-industry for transforming soybean into oils and
pellets is concentrated in the Rosario region on the Parana river. This
area has become the largest soy-processing estate in the world, with
all the infrastructure and the environmental impact that entails.
Spurred on by the export market, the Argentinean government plans
further expansion of the soybean industry, adding another 4 million
hectares to the existing 14 million hectares of soy production by 2010.
[4]
Soybean deforestation
The
area of land in soybean production in Brazil has grown on average at
3.2% or 320,000 hectares per year since 1995, resulting in a total
increase of 2.3 million hectares. Today soybean occupies the largest
area of any crop, covering 21% of the cultivated land. The area has
increased by a factor of 57 since 1961, and production volume by a
factor of 138. In Paraguay, soybeans occupy more than 25% of all
agricultural land. All this expansion is at the expense of forests and
other habitats. In Argentina, where 5.6 million hectares of
non-agricultural land has been converted to soya production in less
than ten years, forest conversion rates are three to six times the
global average. In Paraguay, much of the Atlantic forest has been cut. [5] In Brazil, the cerrado
(woodland-savanna) and the grasslands are rapidly falling victim to the
plow.
Forcing
small farmers out
Biotech
promoters always claim the expansion of soybean cultivation as a
measure of the successful adoption of the transgenic technology by
farmers. But these data conceal the fact that soybean expansion leads
to extreme land and income concentration. In Brazil, soybean
cultivation displaces 11 agricultural workers for every one who finds
employment in the sector. This is not a new phenomenon. In the 1970s,
2.5 million people were displaced by soybean production in Parana, and
0.3 million in Rio Grande do Sul. Many of these now landless people
moved to the Amazon where they cleared pristine forests. In the cerrado
region, where transgenic soybean is expanding, there is relatively low
displacement because the area is not widely populated. [6]
In Argentina, the situation is quite
dramatic. Some 60,000 farms went out of business while the area of
Roundup Ready soybean almost tripled. Between 1998 and 2002, one
quarter of farms in the country were lost. In one decade, soybean area
increased 126% at the expense of dairy, maize, wheat and fruit
production. In the 2003/2004 growing season, 13.7 million hectares of
soybean were planted but there was a reduction of 2.9 million hectares
in maize and 2.15 million hectares in sunflowers. [7]
For the biotech industry, huge increases in the soybean area cultivated
and more than a doubling of yields per unit area are an economic and
agronomic success. For the country, that means more imports of basic
foods at teh expense of food sovereignty, and for poor small farmers
and consumers, increased food prices and more hunger. [8]
Soybean expansion in Latin America is also
related to biopolitics and the power of multinationals. Millions of
hectares of Roundup Ready soybean were planted in Brazil during 2002
and 2003, despite a moratorium on GM crops being in effect. Through
their political influence, multinationals have managed to expand
dramatically the cultivation of transgenic crops in developing
countries. During the early years of GM soybean production in
Argentina, Monsanto did not, and said they would not, charge farmers
royalties to use the technology. But now that farmers are hooked, the
multinational is pressuring farmers, via the government, for payment of
intellectual property rights, despite the fact that Argentina signed
UPOV 78, which allows farmers to save seeds for their own use.
Paraguayan farmers have also recently signed an agreement with Monsanto
to pay the company $2 per tonne.
Soybean cultivation degrades the
soil
Soybean cultivation has
always led to erosion, especially in areas where it is not part of a
long rotation. Soil loss has reached an average rate of 16 tonnes per
hectare per year (t/ha/y) in the US Midwest, far greater than is
sustainable; and soil loss levels in Brazil and Argentina are estimated
at between 19-30 t/ha/y depending on management, slope and climate.
Farmers wrongly believe that no-till systems mean no erosion. No-till
agriculture can reduce soil loss, but with the advent of herbicide
tolerant soybean, many farmers now cultivate in highly erodible
lands. Research shows that despite improved soil cover,
erosion and negative changes in soil structure can still be substantial
in highly erodible lands if weed cover is reduced.
Large-scale
soybean monocultures have rendered Amazonian soils unusable. In areas
of poor soils, fertilisers and lime have to be applied heavily within
two years. In Bolivia, soybean production is expanding towards the
east, and in many areas soils are already compacted and suffering
severe soil degradation. One hundred thousand hectares of
soybean-exhausted soils were abandoned for cattle-grazing, which in
turn further degrades the land. As land is abandoned, farmers move to
other areas where they again plant soybeans and repeat the vicious
cycle of soil degradation.
In Argentina,
intensive soybean cultivation has led to massive soil nutrient
depletion. Continuous soybean production has extracted an estimated 1
million tonnes of nitrogen and about 227,000 tonnes of phosphorous. The
estimated cost of replenishing this nutrient loss via fertilisers is
US$ 910 million. [9] The
increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorus found in several river
basins of Latin America is certainly linked to the increase of soybean
production.
A key technical factor in the
rapid spread of soybean production in Brazil was the claim that
soybean’s symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing
rhizobium bacteria in the plant’s root nodules meant that the
crop could be grown without fertilisers. What the companies failed to
tell farmers was that the glyphosate herbicide packaged with the GM
seeds is directly toxic to the bacteria, rendering the soybeans
dependent on chemical fertilisers for nitrogen. Moreover, the common
practice of converting uncultivated pasture to soybeans results in an
overall reduction in the levels of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, again
making soybean dependent on synthetic nitrogen.
Monocultures and ecological
vulnerability
The link between
biodiversity reduction caused by the monoculture expansion and
increased insect pest outbreaks and disease epidemics is well
established. In poor and genetically homogenous landscapes insects and
pathogens find ideal conditions to thrive. This leads to the increased
use of pesticides, which after a while are no longer effective due to
the development of pest-resistance or ecological upsets typical of the
pesticide treadmill. Pesticides also cause major problems of soil and
water pollution, elimination of biodiversity and human poisoning. The
humid and warm conditions of the Amazon are also favourable for fungal
growth, resulting in the increased used of fungicides. In Brazil, the
soybean crop is increasingly being affected by stem canker and sudden
death syndrome.
Soybean rust is a new
fungal disease increasingly affecting soybeans in South America, which
is increasing fungicide applications. In addition, since 1992, more
than 2 million hectares have been infected by cyst nematodes. Many of
these pest problems are linked to the genetic uniformity and increased
vulnerability of soybean monocultures, and also to the direct effects
of Roundup on the soil ecology, through the depression of mycorrhizal [10] fungal populations and the
elimination of antagonists that keep many soil-borne pathogens under
control. [11]
A
quarter of all pesticides applied in Brazil are used on soybean, which
amounted to 50,000 tonnes in 2002. Pesticide use is increasing at a
rate of 22% per year. While biotech promoters claim that one
application of Roundup is all that is needed for whole season weed
control, studies show that in areas of transgenic soybean, the total
amount and number of herbicide applications have incr-eased. In the
USA, the use of glyphosate rose from 6.3 million pounds in 1995 to 41.8
million pounds in 2000. In Argentina, Roundup applications reached an
estimated 160 million litre equivalents in the 2004 growing-season.
Herbicide usage is expected to increase as weeds develop resistance to
Roundup.
Yields of transgenic soybean
average 2.3 to 2.6 t/ha in the region, about 6% less than conventional
varieties, and are especially low under drought conditions. Due to
pleiotropic effects (stems splitting under high temperatures and water
stress), transgenic soybean suffer 25% higher losses than conventional
soybean. Some 72% of the yields of transgenic soybeans were lost in the
2004/2005 drought in Rio Grande do Sul, which is expected to translate
into a 95% drop in exports with dramatic economic consequences. Most
farmers have already defaulted on one third of government loans.
Other ecological impacts
By
creating crops resistant to its herbicides, a biotech company can
expand the market for its patented chemicals. The market value of
herbicide-tolerant crops increased 10-fold between 1995 and 2000, from
$75 to $805 million. In 2002, herbicide-tolerant soybean occupied 36.5
million hectares around the world, making it by far the number one GM
crop in terms of area. [12]
Global herbicide sales (especially glyphosate) continue to increase.
The continuous use of herbicides, and especially the use of glyphosate
with herbicide-tolerant crops, can lead to serious ecological problems.
When a single herbicide is used repeatedly on a crop, the chances of
herbicide-resistance developing in weed populations greatly increases.
About 216 cases of pesticide resistance have been reported in one or
more herbicide chemical families. [13]
Given
industry pressures to increase herbicide sales, the acreage treated
with broad-spectrum herbicides will expand, exacerbating the
resis-tance problem. Weed resistance has already been documented with
Australian populations of annual ryegrass, quackgrass, birdsfoot
trefoil, Cirsium arvense, and Eleusine indica. [14]
In the Argentinian pampas, eight species of weeds, among them two
species of Verbena and one species of Ipomoea, already exhibit
resistance to glyphosate. [15]
Herbicide
resistance becomes more of a problem as weeds are exposed to fewer and
fewer herbicides. Transgenic soybean reinforces this trend on account
of market forces. In fact, weed populations can even adapt to tolerate
or “avoid” certain herbicides. In the US state of
Iowa, populations of common waterhemp have demonstrated delayed
germination, which allows them to avoid planned glyphosate
applications. The GM crop itself may also assume
‘vounteer’ weed status. In Canada, volunteer canola
resistant to three herbicides (glyphosate, imidazolinone, and
glufosinolate) has been detected. Farmers have to resort to
the highly toxic 2,4-D to control the volunteer canola. In northern
Argentina, there are several “superweeds” than
demonstrate this kind of “stacked’ or
“multiple” resistance to glyphosate.
Biotech
companies claim that when properly applied, herbicides should not pose
a threat to humans or the environment. But in practice, the large-scale
planting of GM crops encourages the aerial application of herbicides
and much of what is sprayed is wasted through drift and leaching. The
companies contend that glyphosate degrades rapidly in the soil, does
not accumulate in ground water, has no effect on non-target organisms,
and leaves no residue in food, water or soil. Yet glyphosate has been
reported to be toxic to some non-target species in the soil –
both to beneficial predators such as spiders, mites, and carabid and
coccinellid beetles, and to detritivores such as earthworms, including
microfauna as well as to aquatic organisms, including fish.
Glyphosate
is a systemic herbicide (which means it is absorbed into and moves
through the whole plant), so it is carried into the harvested parts of
plants. Exactly how much glyphosate is present in the seeds of
herbicide-tolerant corn or soybeans is not known, as grain products are
not included in conventional market surveys for pesticide residues. The
fact that this and other herbicides are known to accumulate in fruits
and tubers raises questions about food safety, especially now that more
than 100 million pounds of this herbicide are used annually in the US
alone. [16] Even in the
absence of immediate (acute) effects, it might take 40 years for a
potential carcinogen to act in enough people for it to be detected as a
cause. Moreover, research shows that glyphosate seems to act in a
similar fashion to antibiotics by altering soil biology in a yet
unknown way and causing effects like:
-
Reducing the ability of soybeans and
clover to fix nitrogen.
- Rendering bean plants more vulnerable to disease.
- Reducing growth of beneficial soil-dwelling mycorrhizal fungi, which are key for helping plants extract phosphorous from the soil.
Farm-scale
evaluations in the UK showed that herbicide-resistant crop management
within and in the margins of beet and oilseed rape production led to
reductions in beetle, butterfly and bee populations. Counts of
predacious carabid beetles that feed on weed seeds were also smaller in
GM crop fields. The abundance of invertebrates that are food for
mammals, birds, and other invertebrates were also found to be generally
lower in herbicide-resistant beet and oilseed rape. [17]
The absence of flowering weeds in GM fields can have serious
consequences for beneficial insects which require pollen and nectar for
survival.
Conclusions
Soybean
expansion in Latin America represents a recent and powerful threat to
biodiversity in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. GM soybeans
are much more environmentally damaging than other crops, partly because
of their unsustainable production requirements, and partly because
their export focus requires massive transportation infrastructure
projects, which open up vast tracts of land to other environmentally
unsound economic and extractive activities.
The
production of herbicide-resistant soybean leads to environmental
problems such as deforestation, soil degradation, pesticide and genetic
contamination. Socio-economic consequences include severe concentration
of land and income, the expulsion of rural populations to the Amazonian
frontier and to urban areas, compounding the concentration of the poor
in cities. Soybean expansion also diverts government funds otherwise
usable in education, health, and alternative, far more sustainable
agroecological methods.
The multiple
impacts of soybean expansion also reduce the food security potential of
target countries. Much of the land previously devoted to grain, dairy
products or fruits has been converted to soybean for exports. As long
as these countries continue to embrace neoliberal models of development
and respond to demand from the globalised economy, the rapid
proliferation of soybean will increase, and so will the associated
ecological and social impacts.
1 Clive James (2005), Global review of commercialised transgenic crops: 2005. International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Application Briefs, No 23-2002. Ithaca , New York.
3 PM Fearnside (2001), “Soybean cultivation as a threat to the environment in Brazil”, Environmental Conservation 28: 23-28.
4 Charles Benbrook (2005), Rust, resistance, run down soils, and rising costs – problems facing soybean producers in Argentina. Ag BioTech InfoNet, Technical Paper No. 8.
5 C Jason (2004), World agriculture and the Environment. Island Press. Washington.
6 PF Donald (2004), “Biodiversity impacts of some agricultural commodity production systems,” Conser-vation Biology 18:17-37.
7 Walter Pengue (2005), “Transgenic crops in Argentina: the ecological and social debt,” Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 25: 314-322.
8 JF Jordan (2001), “Genetic engineering, the farm crisis and world hunger,” BioScience 52: 523-529.
9 Walter Pengue (2005), “Transgenic crops in Argentina: the ecological and social debt,” Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 25: 314-322.
10 Symbiotic associations between fungi and plant roots.
11 Miguel Altieri (2004), Genetic engineering in agriculture: the myths, environmental risks and alternatives, Food First Books, Oakland.
12 Clive James (2004), Global review of commercialised transgenic crops: 2004. International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Application Briefs, No 23-2002. Ithaca , New York.
13 Jane Rissler and Margaret Mellon (1996), The ecological risks of engineered crops, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
14 Miguel Altieri (2004), Genetic engineering in agriculture: the myths, environmental risks and alternatives, Food First Books, Oakland.
15 Walter Pengue (2005), “Transgenic crops in Argentina: the ecological and social debt,” Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 25: 314-322.
16 http://bogota.usembassy.gov/wwwsglyp.shtml
17 www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/fse/index.htm
Miguel Altieri is
professor of agroecology
at the University of California in Berkeley. His latest book in the
agroecology theme, Genetic Engineering in Agriculture: The myths,
environmental risks, and alternatives, was published by Food First in
2004. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Walter Pengue is Professor of Agriculture and Ecology at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. He has written extensively on Latim America’s soybean invasion. He can be contacted at [email protected].