Feedlot
Meat Has Spurred a Soy Boom
That Has a Devastating
Environmental and Human
Cost
Alternet
March 18, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/environment/150277/feedlot_meat_has_spurred_a_soy_boom
_that_has_a_devastating_environmental_and_human_cost
Feedlot
Meat Has Spurred a Soy Boom That
Has a
Devastating
Environmental
and Human Cost
South
America is being taken over by a
handful of companies in
the
soy
business that are destroying
ecologically sensitive areas
and
pushing
people from their ancestral
land.
By Jill
Richardson
Much of
South America is rapidly coming
to resemble Iowa. Where
one
might
expect to see virgin Amazon
rainforest, lush grasslands
or
Patagonian
steppe, there are now often
monocultures of
soybeans,
extending
for miles and miles. People and
cultures are
disappearing
in the
transition; small landholders and
tenant farmers are
being
driven off
their land (or pushed deeper into
untouched forests or
grasslands);
and pasture-based cattle ranches
are being replaced by
feedlots.
In the feedlots the cattle eat
some of the soy produced
on
the land
where they once would have
grazed; but an enormous
portion
of the soy
is never eaten in South America.
Instead, it is
exported,
mostly to
China or the EU. (The United
States is the largest
producer
and
exporter of soy in the world and
is thus not a major market
for
South
American soy.)
The change
has occurred only in the last few
decades. Soybeans now
occupy huge
swaths of land in Brazil,
Argentina, Paraguay,
Uruguay
and
Bolivia. Together, these nations
make up five of the world's
top
10 soy
producers. Most significant among
them are Brazil and
Argentina,
which together produced over 105
million metric tons of
soybeans in
2008. Half of Argentina's
cropland is devoted to soy,
and
the crop
makes up one-third of the
country's exports. And for
the
most part,
soy cultivation, processing and
exporting took off in
these
countries since the year 2000.
Soy is typically crushed
into
meal, which
is fed to animals, and made into
oil used for biofuels
or
added to
many food products.
The changes
in farming that have accompanied
the soy boom would
hardly
raise an eyebrow for many
Americans, where soy has been
a
major crop
and livestock feed for decades.
After all, the U.S.
more
or less
invented and then exported this
farming model. The
soybeans
are grown
on large farms, often over 1,000
hectares (2,471
acres),
and
sometimes on farms significantly
larger than that. As the
acreage
devoted to
soy grew over the last decade,
the land became
concentrated
in fewer and fewer hands.
Soybeans are grown
using
commercial
fertilizer, herbicides like
Roundup (glyphosate),
atrazine,
and 2,4-D, insecticides like
endosulfan, and
fungicides.
In 1996,
Argentina was the first to permit
GE soy, and now 98
percent
of the
nation's soy is genetically
engineered. Today, Argentina
is
also home
to several weeds resistant to
Monsanto's herbicide
Roundup,
a direct
result of overuse of Roundup on
GE soy. From Argentina,
GE
soy was
smuggled and illegally planted in
neighboring countries.
Brazil
legalized GE soy in 2003, and by
2007, some two-thirds of
its
crop was
genetically modified.
Along with
the soy comes a model of vertical
integration and
corporate
concentration. Five companies in
Argentina -- Cargill,
Bunge,
Dreyfus, and two Argentinian
companies, Aceitera
General
Deheza and
Vicentin -- control 80 percent of
Argentina's nearly
$4.9
billion in
soybean oil exports. Similarly,
Cargill, Dreyfus,
Toepfer,
Archer
Daniels Midland, and Nidera
control soybean meal.
(Argentina's
soy meal
exports were worth over $7.1
billion in 2008.)
Often,
farmers
contract with these companies,
which designate how the
farmer
is to grow
the beans.
As many of
the companies are foreign, as are
the companies that
make
the seeds,
fertilizer and pesticides,
Paraguayans complain of
a
"triple
loss of sovereignty: to rely on
export earnings from a
single
product,
transgenic soybeans, the seeds
for which are provided by
a
single
company, the multinational
Monsanto; loss of
territorial
sovereignty
as large areas are leased or
purchased by foreign
producers,
Brazilians and Argentinians; and
also a loss of food
sovereignty,
because soy uses monocultures and
displaces food
production
for dietary staples of the rural
population."
Paraguay is
not the only country to see
production of dietary
staples
displaced.
Argentinians are also
experiencing displacement of
cattle
ranches and
farms that might otherwise
produce grains or
vegetables.
The soy
boom has driven up land prices,
and it has also driven
up
food
prices, as more land is devoted
to soy for export instead
of
food for
the domestic market. Argentina, a
beef-loving country,
now
produces
half of its beef in its 15,000
feedlots instead of on
pasture.
Even Argentina's cowboys, called
gauchos, are becoming
a
thing of
the past.
As the
promise of soy profits gobbles up
more land, Argentina
is
losing some
of its fragile ecosystems, like
dry forest and the
Patagonian
steppe. Much of the soy expansion
takes place in the
country's
Chaco region. The same is true in
other countries as
well,
as Brazil
sees the loss of its Amazon.
However, most of Brazil's
soy
production
takes place outside of the
Amazon. Less
internationally
recognized
but more threatened by soy
production is the
Cerrado,
Brazil's
savannah that now occupies only
20 percent of its
original
area.
Likewise, Bolivia's soy is
centered in its Chiquitano
tropical
dry
forests, not its Amazon, and
Paraguay is losing its
Atlantic
forest.
Just as
startling as the environmental
cost is the human cost of
the
soy boom.
Certainly, some are getting rich
from soy, but as they
do,
others are
losing their land. Peasant
farmers in South
America,
particularly
the indigenous, often do not have
legal titles to land
their
families have farmed for
generations, making them
vulnerable to
having the
land sold or stolen right out
from under them.
In
Argentina, the indigenous
complain that loss of land as
well as
deforestation
leave them unable to hunt, fish,
or gather or produce
foods and
traditional medicines. The
government has responded
by
handing out
meager food aid packages, which
the indigenous see as
insufficient.
In
Argentina's soy growing areas,
poverty is 37 percent, much
higher
than the
national average of 20.6 percent.
In the province of
Chaco,
some 20 to
40 percent of the population is
estimated to have left
because of
soy production. There, and in
Paraguay, soy
displaced
cotton,
which required more labor than
soy and thus provided
employment.
Peasants who live near soy
cultivation also complain
of
health
problems due to indiscriminate
pesticide spraying.
Why have
soybeans suddenly taken off in
South America? A new
report
by Food and
Water Watch traces it to trade
deregulation. Since
the
WTO was
formed in 1995, soy imports to
the EU's 15 member
countries
prior to
2004 increased by 51.1 percent.
In a world of free
trade,
soy
processing corporations were
attracted to the low prices of
land
and labor
in South America (compared to the
costs in the world's
largest soy
producing nation, the United
States).
Sophia
Murphy, a senior adviser at the
Institute for Agriculture
and
Trade
Policy, notes that the EU's
recent enthusiasm for soy
imports
might have
happened with or without the WTO,
as the EU already had
reduced
tariffs on livestock feed under
pressure from the
United
States
prior to 1995. But whatever the
cause, the result is the
same.
Today, a
full 80 percent of EU's soy
imports come from just
Brazil
and
Argentina. Where does the soy go?
Food and Water Watch traces
it
to Europe's
largest pork and poultry
producing nations:
Denmark,
France,
Germany, Netherlands, Poland,
Spain and the United
Kingdom.
Since the
WTO went into effect, notes the
report, soy meal imports
to
these
countries rose by 75.3
percent.
With a
cheap source of imported feed,
Europe has seen an increase
in
so-called
factory farms, particularly for
pork and chicken.
(Since
the early
1990s, as the EU increased its
imports, the price of
soy
has
gradually fallen, although right
now prices are sky-high.)
For
example,
notes Food and Water Watch, in
2007, the largest 1
percent
of farms
produced 74 million pigs, half of
all pigs in the EU.
The
concentration
of livestock production on
enormous farms leads
to
environmental
degradation. And the increase in
cheap meat, often sold
through
fast food chains, does not help
the health of European
consumers
much either.
Food and
Water Watch provides a number of
policy recommendations
to
reverse the
trend of increased soy production
in South America and
consumption
in Europe. First, it recommends,
agriculture should be
removed
from the WTO and other EU trade
deals. FWW also calls out
the
Round Table
on Responsible Soy (RTRS) and the
Round Table on
Sustainable
Consumptions as "industry efforts
to greenwash the
environmental
harm of global, industrial
agriculture," and calls
on
governments
to end both direct and indirect
support for these
campaigns.
Perhaps
most simply and importantly, Food
and Water Watch urges
governments
to uphold the law, force
companies to pay taxes,
and
abide by
animal welfare and environmental
regulations.
Additionally,
it calls on
EU governments to "enforce laws
that prohibit monopoly
power and
economic collusion and prohibit
anticompetitive
practices"
by
supermarkets and grain traders.
The EU, for its part, seems to
be
headed in
the other direction: it has
recently loosened its
prohibitions
on genetically engineered
feed.
