"Soybeans for Me, Argentina ... "

Only affordable to larger wealthy fanners, "direct drilling" required a mammoth special machine which automatically inserts the GM soybean seed into a hole drilled several centimeters deep, and then presses dirt down on top of it. With this direct drilling machine, thousands of acres could be planted by one man. By contrast, a traditional three hectare peach or lemon grove required 70 to 80 farm laborers to cultivate. Previous crop residues were simply left in the field to rot, producing a wide variety of pests and weeds alongside the Monsanto GMO soybean sprouts. That in turn led to greater markets for Monsanto to sell its special patented glyphosate or Roundup herbicide, along with the required Roundup Ready patented soybean seeds. After several years of such planting, the weeds began to show a special tolerance to glyphosate, requiring ever stronger doses of that or other herbicides. 13

With the decision to license Monsanto genetically engineered Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996, Argentina was to undergo a revolution which its proponents hailed as a "second green revolution." In reality it was the devolution of a once-productive national family farm-based agriculture system into a neo-feudal state system dominated by a handful of powerful, wealthy Latifundista landowners.

The Menem government insured that the door was opened wide to the introduction of GMO soybean seeds. Argentine farmers were in dire economic straits following years of hyperinflation. Monsanto jumped in and extended "credit" to loan-starved farmers to buy Monsanto GMO seeds and Monsanto Roundup herbicide, the only herbicide effective on its Roundup Ready soybean. Monsanto also made the initial transition to GMO soybean more alluring to farmers by offering to provide them with the necessary "direct drilling" machines and training.

"Soybeans for Me, Argentina ... " The results of the GMO soybean revolution in Argentina were impressive in one respect. The nation's agriculture economy was completely transformed in less than a decade.

In the 1970's, before the debt crisis, soybean was not even a factor in the national agriculture economy, with only 9,500 hectares of

soybean plantations. In those years, a typical family farm produced a variety of vegetable crops, grains, raised chickens and perhaps a few cows for milk, cheese and meat.

By 2000, after four years of adopting Monsanto soybeans and mass production techniques, over 10 million GMO soy hectares had been planted. By 2004, the area had expanded to more than 14 million hectares. Large agribusiness combines had managed to clear forests, as well as traditional lands occupied by the indigenous people to create more land for soy cultivation.

Argentine agricultural diversity, with its fields of corn, wheat, and cattle, was rapidly being turned into mono culture, just as Egyptian farming was taken over and ruined by cotton in the 1880's.

For more than a century, Argentine farm land, especially the legendary pampas, had been filled with wide fields of corn and wheat amid green pastures grazed by herds of cattle. Farmers rotated between crops and cattle to preserve soil quality. With the introdu<;:tion of soybean mono culture, the soil, leeched of its vital nutrients, required even more chemical fertilizers-not less, as Monsanto had promised. The large beef and dairy herds which had roamed freely for decades on the grasslands of Argentina were now forced into cramped US-style mass cattle feedlots to make way for the more lucrative soybean. Fields of traditional cereals, lentils, peas and green beans had already almost vanished.

A leading Argentine agro-ecologist, Walter Pengue, a specialist in the impact of GMO soybeans, predicfed that, "If we continue in this path, perhaps within 50 years the land will not produce anything at all."14

By 2004, 48% of all agricultural land in the country was dedicated to soybean crops, and between 90% and 97% of these were Monsanto GMO Roundup Ready soybeans. Argentina had become the world's largest uncontrolled experimental laboratory for GMO,l5

Between 1988 and 2003, Argentine dairy farms had been reduced by half. For the first time, milk had to be imported from Uruguay at costs far higher than domestic prices. As mechanized soybean

mono culture forced hundreds of thousands of workers off the land, poverty and malnutrition soared.

In the more tranquil era of the 1970's, before the New York banks stepped in, Argentina enjoyed one of the highest living standards in Latin America. The percentage of its population officially below the poverty line was 5% in 1970. By 1998, that figure had escalated to 30% of the total population. And by 2002, to 51 %. By 2003, malnutrition rose to levels estimated at between 11 % and 17% of the total population of 37 million.16

Amid the drastic national economic crisis arising from the state's defaulting on its debt, Argentines found they were no longer able to rely on small plots of land for their survival. The land had been overrun by mass GMO soybean acreages and blocked to even ordinary survival crops.

Under the support of foreign investors and agribusiness giants like Monsanto and Cargill, large Argentine landowners moved systematically to seize land from helpless peasants, most often with backing from the state. By law, peasants had rights over lands of which they had the uncontested use for 20 years or more. That traditional right was trampled by the powerful new interests behind agribusiness. In the vast region of Santiago del Estero in the north, large feudal landowners began an operation of mass deforestation to make way for wholesale GMO soybean crops.

Peasant communities were suddenly told that their land belonged to someone else. Typically, if they refused to leave willingly, armed groups would steal their cattle, burn their crops and threaten them with more violence. The lure of huge profits from GMO soybean exports was the driving force behind the violent upheaval surrounding traditional farming across the country . . As farming families were made destitute and pushed off their lands, they fled to new shanty towns on the edges of the larger cities, turning to social disorder, crime and suicide, while disease became rampant amid the impossible overcrowding. Within several years, more than 200,000 peasants and small farmers were driven off their lands to make way for the large agribusiness soybean planters. 17