Opinion Sur Joven

In the last Opinión Sur Joven issue, the first part of this article referred to a scientific study that proved the negative effects of glyphosate in people’s health and the ecosystem where it’s used. Dr. Andrés Carrasco, director of the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of UBA [1], told Opinión Sur Joven the main soybean herbicide (about 220 million liters are used on Argentine crops) may cause malformations in limbs and some organs, and microcephaly in embryos, apart from serious effects due to intoxication of the people living near it.

As per horticultural scientist and geneticist Alberto Lapolla, glyphosate may contaminate groundwater, thus reaching rivers and contaminating fresh water sources. This would also affect the soil and the air, causing the death of macroflora and macrofauna.

Although maintaining criticism and giving some credit to Monsanto -almighty creator of glyphosate and other agrochemicals- is a good thing, just by googling the name of the herbicide we may stumble upon hundreds of claims against the substance due to health damage -especially among kids- in the farming areas where it’s used.

How did this phenomenon start? How will it end? How strong are the economic interests behind this pesticide? In this second part of Opinión Sur Joven’s special report on glyphosate effects, we will try to answer these questions and more.

The beginning

The origin of glyphosate dates back to the beginnings of the eighties, when it was used to get rid of weed in crops. “In the late eighties, Monsanto found genes within the herbicide to avoid killing certain bacteria. Once identified, the gene was injected in a seed: a soybean seed. During those hyper-capitalist years, finding a technological package associating a seed with a herbicide implied a great success”, Carrasco explains.

“This allowed an expansion without boundaries, because with direct seeding there’s no need to prepare the soil, and less labor is needed. We must recognize it’s revolutionary: They no longer need to fight against nature; they simply destroy it, overrunning it. They destroy it because they spread the poison and kill everything that may grow, except for the seed”, he says.

That technological package created by Monsanto -the reason why it was created with soybean is unknown; perhaps they saw the boom coming, or maybe it was just luck- enabled a production method with gigantic profitability levels. Despite being a 21st century success, the key sounds very “nineties-like”: technological revolution and very little labor. The motto of the neoliberal decade.

None of this would be relevant if soybean had no buyers. But it does, and many. According to Alberto Lapolla, the main trigger for the soybean mega-demand in the world was the famous mad cow disease. “That disease proved herbivores could not be fed with animal protein. So farmers started feeding them soybean. Now cows no longer eat grass, and they’re locked up consuming grain and balanced feed full of anabolic steroids and antibiotics”, he describes.

This change in the farming production model rocketed soybean purchases in countries such as China, where swine and poultry are fed with the controversial legume.

And the demand increase pushed Monsanto -and its whole agrotoxic pachage- a bit further through royalty payments. According to Lapolla, this business generates 100 billion dollars a year.

Nothing lasts forever

“Nature isn’t static, and it will keep defending itself with its intrinsic mechanisms to survive”, Carrasco warns. Because, when the natural cycle is interrupted, Mother Earth is compelled to do what it does best: resisting and surviving, so glyphosate might soon lose the battle.

“Through these mechanisms, resistance to weeds has increased, and that’s why glyphosate doses have increased as well. Therefore, farmers gradually need more. I believe they’re reaching the limit, the maximum efficacy level”, he adds.

However, Monsanto’s smart people have already begun looking for a replacement. And they seem to have found it. In 2007, Science magazine published an article from Nebraska University explaining that scientists had discovered a gene that allowed creating plants that tolerated dicamba (a herbicide), which would be a replacement to control weeds in crops such as soybean or cotton. The collateral damages of this replacement are yet to be studied.

For now, glyphosate is still the most popular herbicide in the Argentine pampas. As we’ve already mentioned, it’s a profitable business, and questioning it implies affecting strong and hidden interests. Dr. Carrasco experienced this himself; he was seriously criticized by company associations and national authorities.

Is it just chance, or are these coordinated actions to hide the reality a scientific study reveals? We always have the right to doubt, but we can’t pretend those claims aren’t there.

“Only nineteen countries in the world allow the use of transgenic products -explains Lapolla-, and Argentina has the largest relative surface using those products. 99 per cent of Argentine soybean is transgenic. Said country has turned into a giant testing laboratory. In countries such as the United States, only half the soybean crops are allowed to be transgenic”.

In his opinion, glyphosate causes such an alteration in natural selection that more than a decade would be necessary to conduct a reliable study. “I can’t just say it’s wrong, but we should study it”, he insists.

Despite the fact that only 75,000 farmers out of 350,000 produce transgenic soybean (in a country with almost 40 million inhabitants), the money this business generates -like it or not- makes things more difficult. Interests are very strong, and definitely require the State to be independent from the involved sectors, which manage enough resources to exercise their power and their influence in the mass media and the public agenda.

Carrasco mentioned a basic -even economic- principle, balancing costs and profits: “You can’t sustain a productive system to feed Chinese swine only, and tolerating these collateral damages is pointless. I don’t think human health should be endangered for the sake of a production criterion”.

Leaving profitability-oriented values aside, no matter how much money a business generates, you can’t build a sustainable economy -a sine qua non challenge of this third millennium- in times of climate change and economic suffocation.

To conclude this special report on glyphosate and its surrounding issues, we want to make a wish. We hope that in ten or twenty years from now, soybean-producing countries don’t have to see a film devoted to this subject in their cinemas. The victims of the poisoned water depicted in “Erin Brockovich” (2000), or the victims of the toxic ingredients of tobacco featured in “The Insider” (1999) would have probably wished the same.

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