I really love watching Al Jazeera English particularly certain programmes like "Earth Rise" and "People and Power", and just saw the episode titled "Argentina: the Bad Seed" which I have linked in above. Well worth a watch. It couldn't help spark a whole series of thoughts in my head. Here are just a few:
The programme talks about the change in Argentina's economics through the large scale production of soya, a crop in worldwide demand. 95% of Argentina's soya is exported. It is not a food crop helping the rural populations of Argentina but an export crop growing the economy, providing jobs and expanding wealth (we will come back to this). The GMO soya boom has not only helped Argentina out of a pit of economic despair which seemed unimaginable a decade ago, but also ensured it has weathered the recession storm with continued growth, unlike most of the world. It is now a leading economy in Latin America, and it can all be put down to this one crop. Argentina produces more soya than any other country in the world.
As mentioned by the CEO of Los Grobo in this documentary, we are undergoing a new industrial revolution, a soya revolution. Soya today is used not only as food but more so as animal feed and fuel. In fact, more than 50% of the grain traded in the world is used for animal feed and biofuel. This same grain could be better used to feed the over 1 billion people in the world who go hungry everyday. We could take this grain from the mouths of cattle and our engines and instead feed the mouths of hungry children.
Such monocultures are gaining ground worldwide, whether it is soya or palm oil that is the product in demand. However, thought the landscape may appear to be green, these crops can never replace the forest. They are not forests, there is no biodiversity here. In the last 20 yrs Argentina has lost almost half of its remaining forest cover to agriculture. Every year we lose over 13 million acres of forest worldwide, species are dying out 1000 times faster than natural. Nature is giving way to short term economic gain.
Over farming and large scale agriculture does not benefit us in the long term, whether because of the loss of biodiversity or because of continued soil degradation. It is estimated that around the world 40% of Arable land has suffered long term damage. And so, we clear more land, and damage more. As well as this, as one of the scientists in the documentary mentions, in Argentina alone 300 million litres of pesticide are used to sustain such crops, further diminishing biodiversity and killing the land.
However, in Argentina side effects have also been witnessed by the human population, with growing rates of cancer, birth defects and malformation. As these effects are mostly seen in the rural population exposed to the large scale farming and crop dusting, urban populations remain unaware, celebrating the benefits brought by the soya economy. Unaffected, they also remain unaware or uncaring in relation to the land grabs and bullying experienced by the small scale farmers and rural population in the face of multinational corporations.
This is much like us in the Western or "First" world: we do not see the direct effects of such natural destruction, we do not experience the immediate effects of loss of biodiversity or climate change. Our lifestyle is fuelled through such land grabs, such mass agriculture, such deforestation and more. Yet, when it improves our lifestyle at the disadvantage of others, as long as we are not witness to it, it seems we couldn't really care less. It would simply be too difficult on our part to make a small change in our lifestyle, wouldn't it? Who cares that there are people dying because of the way we live?!
Let me at least start with myself.
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