This is democracy at its finest people – you choose the fool and then we’ll all go challenge them to stop their ridiculous and destructive fantasies of converting land for fuel.

This is no April fools joke. If you haven’t heard, biofuels are naaaasty. People are already being displaced by big agribusiness to grow crops for fuel. And, biofuels won’t get us off of fossil fuels anyway. Replacing just 10 percent of world demand for diesel for road transport with biodiesel would require 75 percent of the world’s existing soy, oil palm and rapeseed crops. Even current government mandates for these so-called renewable fuels will create enough demand for biofuels to cause food shortages and human rights and environmental catastrophes around the world.

So go vote! www.biofoolsday.org

Nominees include:

• Linda Cook, Executive Director, Shell Oil. She says that Shell will no longer invest in wind and solar energy and focus their energy solely on liquid fuels, hugely increasing the oil giants investment in biofuels.
• Hugh Grant, CEO, Monsanto. The global biofuels rush has provided a perfect new market for Monsanto’s genetically modified plants, an inevitable ingredient of biofuel feedstocks. The agribusiness giant dismisses evidence that biofuels are harmful for the environment or have anything to do with food price spikes and shortages.
• Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). He says biofuels are “contributing to a cleaner environment,” ignoring the scientific evidence that biofuel production is contributing to the rapid destruction of rainforests abroad and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico here at home.
• Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD). She’s trying to separate federal forest protections from biofuels policy, claiming that prohibiting the clear-cutting of our federal forests for biofuel production keeps us dependent on foreign oil. (Is she forgetting that we are dependent on food and the planet’s biodiversity too?)
• Sen. John Thune (R-SD). A longtime proponent of biofuels, he wants to increase the amount of biofuels that can be blended into gasoline, remove forest protections and the global warming standards in biofuels policy.
• Patricia Woertz, CEO, Archer Daniels Midland. A former Chevron executive before coming to ADM, Woertz is leading the agroenergy charge. ADM is a leading importer of palm oil, a popular biofuel feedstock and a leading cause of deforestation in Southeast Asia.

Oh, yeah–just about everything, including a renewable energy future or attempts to reverse climate change.

In a not so surprising, yet utterly short-sighted and outdated move (circa 20th century, not new Millenium), Shell Oil has decided to abandon all their investments in renewables such as solar and wind energy, and transfer that business to what they have deemed more economically promising.  What have they decided to invest in?  Agrofuels–industrial scale biofuels.

Linda Cook, Shell’s executive director of gas and power, said:  “If there were renewables [which made money] we would put money into it.”  She went on, “We do not expect material investment [in wind and solar] going forward.”

Despite an ever-growing and indisputable range of scientific evidence that links agrofuels to massive deforestation, increased food prices, and establishes that over their lifecycle, agrofuels are in many instances more greenhouse gas emitting than petroleum (i.e. climate negative), Shell has chosen to put their money where their mouth is–in an industry that at first glance appears to be a good business proposition, but will do nothing in the short or long term to combat our climate crisis, or addiction to fossil fuels.

Now, more than ever, as we work to reduce our own consumption, we must also hold our government and businesses accountable to invest in the solutions and alternatives that are tried, tested and true–solutions that will turn the tide on the serious situation we all face.  Investment in real solutions are a better business proposition, and investments that harm the planet and people are a liability.  It’s our job to make sure that Shell, its shareholders, and every other company out there understands this.

I returned last night from a 24 hour visit to the Agropalma plantation. Their sprawling 107,000 hectare (264,402 acre) complex is located just three hours south of Belem, in the Brazilian Amazon. 40,000 hectares (98,842 acres) of this land is covered in palm oil plantations and the other 60,000 hectares (148,263 acres) of land remain in what Agropalma calls “forest reserves”. 1600 kilometers of roads run through the plantation—that’s 994 miles. Agropalma differentiates themselves from many other palm oil producers worldwide through their production of organically certified palm oil. 30% of their total palm oil in production is organically produced and certified. The rest is not.

Agropalma is a major producer of palm oil for all of Latin America, and one of the primary sources of organic certified palm oil to the U.S. and European markets. Their palm oil is destined for the food and cosmetic industry, but not for biofuels. In fact, if you shop at Whole Foods, and buy a 365 brand product that contains palm oil you have most certainly consumed Agropalma palm oil.

Ciranda, the company that supplies and markets the Agropalma oil to the U.S., has been in touch with RAN as a result of our work on palm oil and encouraged us to visit the plantation. My trip to Belem to attend the World Social Forum last week provided the perfect opportunity to take a field trip to Agropalma. Levana, from RAN’s grassroots organizing department, and photographer, Lou Dematteis, visited the plantation and on-site processing facility with me.

Our visit to the plantation was an extremely well-orchestrated event, with one planned activity after another, involving traversing long distances in a car (sometimes 1 hour through pure palm oil) to our next destination, and when we arrived at various stops we were often greeted by 8 staff representing a specific department of Agropalma, i.e. phytosanitary control, organic production, environment department, etc. Everybody was super friendly, and willing to answer all of our many questions. By the end of the day, we had ingested much information, including taking a 3km walk through one of the forest reserves, which ended with a torrential downpour, as to be expected in the rainforest. Here’s some of what we were told:

• The owner of Agropalma was a recipient of the Brazilian government’s tax incentive program in the 1980’s which encouraged industry and individuals to relocate to the Amazon. The philosophy of the government was, “Occupy the Amazon in order not to lose it”
• Since 2002, Agropalma has only planted palm oil in cleared land—before then (since the early 1980’s) rainforest was cleared to make way for the plantation
• The Agropalma complex contains 3 residential villages for employees, has a total of 350 houses, houses 2500 people, has 4 “clubs”, 1 school, and 1 medical center
• Oil palm cutters and collectors get paid extra based on productivity, e.g. how many bunches they collect. Each cutter keeps track daily of each bunch that is picked, as does the onsite manager.
• The organic palm plantation is at the farthest north end of the complex and is separated by about 150 meters from the conventional plantation
• Agropalma’s organic certifications come from the Biodynamic Institute, BioSuisse, USDA, and JAS (Japan Agricultural Standard).
• The Acará river runs north/south through much of the plantation
• In 2004, in partnership with Sao Paulo University, Agropalma carried out research to assess and monitor the biodiversity of the forest patches near the plantations. More recently, Agropalma has partnered with Conservation International and they are doing some research on biodiversity in and around the plantation as well.
• For both conventional and organic palm oil production, pest management is done using biological and mechanical control. They use a variety of native predators, sugar traps, pheromones, and inoculation of bacteria or fungus to control pests. Pesticides are used in the conventional area when a major outbreak occurs.

Towards late afternoon, we were heading back to the main office. We still had a 45 minute drive through oil palm plantations ahead of us. As far as my eyes could see into the distant horizon, I saw a boundless green sea of palm trees. I kept thinking that there was something uncanny about the vastness and uniformity, almost Hollywood movie set about it. How could something be constructed in such a grand scale?

We stopped at an old, wooden watchtower, decrepit and rotting, in the midst of the plantation so that we could get a bird’s eye view. We only made it up four stories before the structure indicated we could go no further. In the distance, we could see greenery that differentiated itself from the palm—indeed, some forest. Incredible to think that just 20 years ago, this plantation was rainforest. More incredible, perhaps, was that all we could see from that tower was only 2000 hectares of Agropalma palm oil. It went on forever, yet out of sight lay 38,000 hectares more that we couldn’t see from there.

I stood there and recalled a conversation I had earlier with a company employee. I asked why Agropalma operates in the Amazon region given the poor soil quality (Amazon soils are some of the worst agricultural soils on earth), and therefore the necessity to invest massively in fertilizers. After laughing intensely, he replied, “If there is one place that is the worst in the world to produce oil palm it is here in the Amazon.”

More than twenty years after the Brazilian government’s tax incentive program catalyzed a new wave of “occupation”, the trend continues. Several new palm oil plantations are being developed here (Agropalma considers them competitors), and soy continues to expand and threaten the Amazon at an alarming rate. Cattle ranching, mining, and oil exploration are all major threats as well. If we are to save the Amazon, perhaps it’s time to consider occupying something else, like the headquarters of the corporations and financiers responsible for damaging it.

*Photos by Lou Dematteis/Redux

Indigenous federations COIAB and COICA along with RAN, Amazon Watch, Amazon Alliance, and Spectral Q, are coordinating a massive human banner for the opening day. Over 1000 people , largely comprised of Indigenous leaders from throughout the Amazon and South America, along with allies at the forum will stand, sit and lay their bodies down in order to send an urgent message to the world calling for immediate action to defend the Amazon .

As leaders from wealthy nations meet this week in Davos, Swtizerland at the World Economic Forum, our human banner will send this message to them and the global community: the Amazon is on the verge of collapse and the time to act is now. Not only is the destruction of the Amazon a major contributor to global warming, the protection of it is essential to climate stabilization, and vital to the many Indigenous peoples that depend and live within it.

Almost one fifth of the Amazon has been deforested over the past four decades, and each year, between 11,000 and 27,000 square kilometers of additional forest are destroyed. If development plans for the Amazon continue unchecked, scientists predict that the entire Amazon region will be at the brink of permanent ecological collapse within the next 10 – 20 years. The Indigenous communities whose lives and livelihoods depend on it will be devastated in this scenario.

I don’t believe that the path to further destruction is an option, nor is it inevitable. In the last couple of days since I’ve been in Belem, I’ve heard in no uncertain terms from the Indigenous representatives here that the defense of Amazonia is not only essential, it is unquestionable. Stand or sit in, lay your body down. The time is now.

We know that many Cargill executives, as well as Cargill family members (Cargill is privately held and 90% family owned) live, work, and play on Lake Minnetonka.  Yet, many in the surrounding community (an insular, wealthy town of approximately 4,000 people) seem to be unaware of the fact that Cargill’s operations are contributing to rainforest destruction, the often-violent displacement of small farmers and Indigenous communities and climate change.

Cargill’s insatiable appetite for converting ever-more land across the globe into green deserts of soy and palm oil makes them a primary culprit in exacerbating our climate crisis.  Cargill is a top investor, trader and transporter of soy and palm oil.  Cargill is the fourth-largest exporter of palm oil from Malaysia and holds 14,000 acres of plantations–all on newly cleared forestland–throughout Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.  Cargill is also currently finishing construction on a soy processing facility and mega-port in Asuncion, Paraguay, only 500 meters upstream from the main public water utility, raising grave concerns about contamination of the entire capital city’s water supply.

Cargill corporation operates with impunity and blatant disregard for the environment and human rights.  Today’s action on the lake was intended to precipitate a few ripples.  These ripples are only getting bigger, as the wave of resistance grows in opposition to corporations such as Cargill who show minimal initiative or leadership in finding legitimate solutions to our climate crisis.

The RAN agribusiness campaign, together with Student Trade Justice Campaign have organized a U.S. speaking tour for Leticia Galeano, a campesina youth leader from Paraguay. Other co-sponsors include Georgetown University, School of Americas Watch, Institute for Policy Studies, Grassroots International, Across the Americas, World Hunger Year, Global Justice Ecology Project, Small Planet Institute, Witness for Peace Upper Midwest and the Washington Office on Latin America

Leticia Galeano is an inspiring youth leader from the Movimiento Agrario y Popular (a peasant organization in the department of Caaguazú) and student at the Universidad Catolica in Asuncion, Paraguay. Leticia will speak about militarization in Paraguay, and about the role of U.S. agribusiness giants like ADM, Bunge and Cargill in fueling the soybean wars.

Her community, Tekojoja, is an example of organized resistance to agribusiness exploitation. In 2005, the police violently and illegally displaced families from the community, resulting in the deaths of two individuals. There is now an attempt to bring this case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The speaking tour will also be an opportunity to learn about the landless movement in Paraguay and about unique stories of community resistance through food sovereignty initiatives based on the concept of agroecology and subsistence farming. Events will be held at universities, cultural centers, and conferences in various cities. Additional speakers will join Leticia at the events.

The tour will officially kick off on Tuesday evening, September 23 at Loyola University in Chicago. We will then travel to Minneapolis, Washington D.C., New York City, Burlington and Philadelphia. For more information about events in individual cities, see below:

• Chicago
• Minneapolis: IATP, Waite House Community Center
• Washington D.C.: Friends of the Earth, Georgetown University
• New York City

Read the press release.

“The current food crisis is an early warning, and it looks as though we’re ignoring it. We dismissed an even earlier warning, when North Korea suffered a major famine in the late 1990s because of rising energy prices, limited land, and environmental stresses. “After the attacks of September 11, 2001, ‘We are all Americans’ briefly became a popular expression of solidarity around the world,” I write in Mother Earth’s Triple Whammy in TomDispatch. “If we don’t devise policy choices that address energy, agriculture, and climate, while replacing the idolatry of unrestrained growth at the heart of both capitalist and communist economies, the tagline for the 21st century may be: ‘We are all North Koreans.’”

Feffer’s article does a great job at assessing this complex and serious problem, and challenges us to get to real systemic solutions if we want to solve the problem.

Bunge was clearly expecting us. When Judson Barros (director of the NGO FUNAGUS in Piauí, Brazil) and I entered the Sofitel and walked to the check-in for the shareholder meeting, they treated us like VIP’s that they were expecting. The three people at the table looked at our proxy letters and one mumbled, “Oh, yes, these are the letters we heard about.”

We were promptly handed over shareholder badges and invited to climb the stairs to delight in some breakfast before the meeting got started. I couldn’t help but notice the scant number of people present, and the rather small meeting room that we would be sitting in. It was by far the smallest shareholder meeting that I’ve ever attended with a total of 50-60 people total.

The meeting proceeded as expected with an introduction by CEO Alberto Weisser, then a review of the meeting rules, voting, and a powerpoint presentation on the company. Voting results were announced (all resolutions passed), and then the meeting opened to Q&A. By the way, the resolutions up for voting had absolutely zero social or environmental content. They addressed mundane H.R. issues.

Judson stood up during the Q&A period and read a statement about Bunge’s ongoing disrespect for environmental laws in Brazil, specifically in the state of Piauí where he is from. In Piauí, Bunge uses native wood from the Cerrado—a super biodiverse savannah—for 100 percent of their energy needs in all their soy processing plants. In March of this year, three Federal Court Justices in Brasilia, Brazil ruled that Bunge must stop cutting and burning wood from the Cerrado. But, Bunge continues to operate with total disregard for this ruling and for the environment—burning wood in its plant.

After Judson spoke, an older gentleman stood up and stated that he owned 600 shares in Bunge, and that he urged the company to take seriously every word of Judson’s statement. He went on to state that he believes that as an industry leader the company has the responsibility to make big steps forward to respect the environment and be responsible in their practices. The CEO merely looked at him and said, “Thank you.”

RAN’s agribusiness campaign will be in New York City tomorrow, Friday May 23 protesting this U.S. agribusiness giant—Bunge Corporation—during its annual general meeting. Bunge is not only responsible for ongoing forest destruction in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, but also for the displacement of Afro-Brazilian (Quilombolos), Indigenous, and campesino communities—all to make way for massive soy plantations.

And it doesn’t stop there. Bunge was recently implicated in buying soy and sugarcane from plantations that use slave labor in Brazil. They’ve said before that they aren’t associated with slave labor, but they’ve been busted again. All of this is happening in the wake of booming agribusiness profits and a global food crisis.

Please join me and other activists to protest the Bunge shareholder meeting, and greet the shareholders on their way inside the meeting. We will be accompanied by Brazilian activist and NGO director, Judson Barros. He has has traveled to New York from the state of Piaui in Brazil in order to speak in front of the shareholders, board and CEO of Bunge. Judson has been in a legal battle against Bunge for their violation of environmental laws and destruction of the highly biodiverse Cerrado ecosystem. In addition, we will be joined by allies who are beginning a three day fast tomorrow to draw attention to the world food crisis–increasing food prices, more hungry people, and record agribusiness profits.

Stand with us as we tell the shareholders, board of directors and CEO that we won’t stand for their dirty business. We want a healthy climate and intact forests, and we demand the right for Indigenous communities and small farmers to remain on their land and not be displaced by soy.

When: Friday May 23, 2008 at 9am

Where: The Sofitel Hotel—45 West 44^th Street between 5^th Ave and 6^th Ave

Yesterday, I was part of a group of 20 people representing campesino and Indigenous movements as well as social justice and environmental NGO’s who attempted to enter the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS). Initially, a small group of just five of us requested permission to enter the final session of the meeting in order to read a declaration. We were prohibited from entering the meeting. In a drama that lasted over two hours, the management of the Roundtable together with the Hilton Hotel security and local police, decided that they would rather silence the voices of people that represent the frontline of soy expansion, activists, scientists, and students rather than live up to their stated goal of open and multi-stakeholder participation.

The RTRS is meeting for two days this week in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We wanted to enter the meeting so that we could express our concerns about the fallacy of “responsible soy”, and the exclusive nature of the Roundtable process. Three campesino representatives from Paraguay–who all traveled over twenty hours on bus–hoped to express themselves for just two minutes in front of the Roundtable participants.

When we arrived to the Hilton in the late afternoon, the hotel was surrounded by security guards. We attempted to enter through a side door, then the front door, then another side door. At each entrance, security officials told us that if we were here for the Roundtable, we needed to go to the the back of the hotel where we could talk to more security and show them our accreditation. In order to participate in the Roundtable on Responsible Soy, you must get accredited in advance. But, not only that–it’ll cost you just over $400.00. As easy as it is to forget sometimes, there are still many people out there that don’t have internet access (the primary way to sign up for attending the meeting). And, the vast majority of real stakeholders in the soy debate–the campesinos and Indigenous people whose communities are being devastated by expansion–have seldom come across $400.00 in their lives. Yesterday, in the Hilton Lobby, one of the RTRS coordinators explained that all the people who are participating “signed up and paid the fee of $400.00.” Elvio, one of the Paraguayan campesinos looked at him and firmly said, “I’ve never seen that amount of money in my entire life.”

After an hour and a half of debating and discussing, it became quite clear that we were never going to be allowed in to the meeting. Our fellow protesters who had been waiting outside joined us in the back lobby and unfurled two banners. One said, “Soja Responsable por pobreza, muerte, y destruccion” (Soy is Responsible–For Poverty, Death, and Destruction) and the other “ADM, Bunge, Cargill: The ABCs of Rainforest Destruction”. The Paraguayan campesinos read a declaration against the Roundtable and the way in which it promotes the notion that “responsible soy” exists when in reality there is no such thing. RAN has signed onto this declaration, along with hundreds of social movements, networks, and NGO’s around the world.

Finally, the police forced us to leave the hotel. And, although the organizers of the RTRS told us that they would come back with a response as to whether they would let us in or not, they never returned. The police followed us all the way around the hotel, and as we walked peacefully (our group of 20) they ran to put up metal barricades around the front of the hotel. The chief of police for the local area demanded that we get off the public sidewalk near the hotel, and leave the area entirely. Democracy?

One of the Roundtable participants came outside and told us that the meeting organizers had closed off one of the exists from the meeting room so that participants could not see our hear us. They were all forced to go out the front of the hotel, thereby avoiding us entirely. It strikes me that democracy is always strengthened through healthy debate and a variety of perspectives. Our experience yesterday epitomized exclusivity, and mimicked the very same processes that persist in society and continue to disenfranchize the most marginalized people.

On Wednesday in Buenos Aires, the 3^rd Annual meeting of the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) will hold its opening session. Representatives from agribusiness (ADM, Bunge, and Cargill among others), the petroleum industry (Shell oil), finance (ABN Amro), and a few large NGO’s (WWF) will gather to discuss the prospects and possibilities of responsible soy. The representatives of this “multi-stakeholder” process will assemble for a couple of days without questioning whether the very nature of soy monoculture production is responsible—for the environment, for people, and for the climate. Instead, they will work to devise voluntary criteria aimed at encouraging better industry practices, without creating a system to outlaw the worst. And, the Roundtable has developed nothing concrete with respect to monitoring and oversight. For the companies at the Roundtable, there’s not a whole lot of incentive to improve much of anything–it’s only our planet, human rights, and our climate that’s at stake.

On the flipside, tonight in Buenos Aires at a cultural center in the heart of the city, I was part of an overflowing crowd that turned out for a public meeting and press conference to denounce the export soy model and the Roundtable on Responsible Soy. A panel of biologists, doctors, and intellectuals were joined by three campesinos from Paraguay who spoke about living on the frontlines of the soy frontier. They showed photos of children contaminated by agrotoxins, and once fertile land converted into a green desert. Pedro Pablo Caballero, from a community in San Pedro, Paraguay said passionately, “Now is the moment to defend our land and food sovereignty. We have very little time left.”

When the Roundtable ends promptly on Thursday evening, wouldn’t it be incredible if those in attendance could honestly say that they participated with the same urgency and resolve to stop the destruction that Pedro expressed tonight?

]]> http://understory.ran.org/2008/04/22/when-responsible-just-isnt-enough/feed/ 0 http://understory.ran.org/2008/03/09/a-cargill-tale-spray-it-buy-it-ship-it/ http://understory.ran.org/2008/03/09/a-cargill-tale-spray-it-buy-it-ship-it/#comments Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:54:52 +0000 Andrea http://understory.ran.org/2008/03/09/a-cargill-tale-spray-it-buy-it-ship-it/ Final Dispatch: Andrea and Jodie writing from the South American soy frontier

On the way back from visiting the threatened Yaguarete forest and the community of Tava Guarani, we happened upon a soy plantation called Laguna Blanca. It wasn’t hidden; in fact, a large billboard outside the plantation gate proudly advertised it, and called our attention with the words “Corredor de Conservación” (conservation corridor). Various NGO sponsors that in some way or another lend their assistance to the “project” were listed at the bottom. Among them was US AID–the U.S. government’s foreign aid institution.

We got out of the car in order to peak through the front gate and also to take a few pictures of the sign. We were interested in how this soy plantation, or what aspect of it, could be considered a conservation corridor. All of a sudden we realized that a huge sprayer with long arms on each side was maneuvering through the field, diffusing liquid white clouds of toxic chemicals into the air and on the crops. Within seconds of standing at the perimeter of the soy plantation, we smelled the strong fumes of the chemical that was being applied. No doubt, so did the family that lives directly across the small dirt road and whose children were running around the front of their house during the spraying.

Eventually, the driver of the sprayer made his way towards us across the soy field, and parked. When he climbed down off the machine, we were able to see that he was wearing only jeans and a t-shirt. He had absolutely no form of protection on–nothing to protect him from inhaling the toxic fumes, and nothing to protect his skin from coming in contact with the miniscule drops of spray that he was applying in all directions. He saw that a few people were standing at the fence looking in, and walked over to us. We talked for a few minutes and during our brief conversation, he provided us with two extremely critical pieces of information. One, he said that there is no requirement that he use any form of protection. Second, he told us that all the soy from this plantation is sold to the Cargill silo down the road in Santa Rosa. We thanked him for his time, and jumped back in the car. Our next destination: Cargill in Santa Rosa.

About 25 minutes after leaving Laguna Blanca soy plantation, we arrived at the entrance of the Cargill silo. Although it was a Saturday, we hoped to find somebody to speak with. I knocked on the door of the small office and was invited in. I introduced myself as working for RAN on a campaign related to agribusiness. Mr.Cleiner Maeda, who is involved in commercialization at that silo was very open to having a conversation and answering all of my questions. He was incredibly candid, perhaps more so than the top execs at Cargill H.Q. in Minneapolis may have appreciated. During my brief meeting, I learned that the Cargill silo purchases soy from whoever comes to sell it to them. They have no requirements with respect to the plantations they do business with, but only check to ensure that the soybeans meet an international quality standard.
Mr. Maeda wasn’t surprised to hear that a worker on a plantation that sells to Cargill was completely unprotected while applying toxic chemicals. He didn’t have any response other than to say that the use of agrochemicals in soy production is rampant and will probably cause major environmental devastation in the long run. He stated numerous other facts like, soy production is causing deforestation in Paraguay, and it benefits large landowners but is not helping the country’s small farmers whatsoever. But, this Cargill rep was also eager to tell me that the company is doing something to remedy the problem of deforestation. They are buying 800 hectares of land in the state of Alto Paraná, so that they can reforest it with Eucalyptus. Before I left, he had one last thing to share with me. Three enormous boxes beside his desk were filled with Cargill school kits for children in the nearby communities. Each kit comes with several notebooks, pads of paper, a pack of pencils, and is nicely wrapped in a bag. Every item has the Cargill logo on it. In a country like Paraguay, where the State is often non-existent and provides few social services, Cargill’s name brand benefits by providing desperately needed items like school kits, regardless of the impunity with which they operate on the ground.

Back in Asuncion a couple of days later, we were preparing for another meeting. Two Cargill executives based in Paraguay were interested in meeting with us, as well us giving us a boat tour of their planned port on the Rio Paraguay. Jodie and I met them at their office in the Citi building. After passing through a couple of light security checks (exchanging our ID cards for Cargill badges), and getting buzzed into their office, we spent less than one minute in the lobby before being cordially greeted by Fernando Acosta, the general manager for Cargill in Paraguay and Bolivia, and Francisco Solano, the project manger for the new port. The four of us sat comfortably around a table fit for 15 or 20. After brief introductions, Francisco directed our attention to the screen at the end of the room and presented a power point presentation on their port project. The presentation included scope of project, social impact, technical assumptions, products to be processed, mitigation measures, and a history of the licensing process.

The biggest threat posed by this new port is the contamination of the entire drinking supply for the 1 million inhabitants of the capital city of Asuncion. And nothing in this presentation provided persuasive evidence to convince us that building a port just 500 meters upstream from the public utility water intake could possibly be safe. In fact, their principle rationale for the new Cargill port not posing a threat is that there are already several small industrial operations upstream from the same water utility. Fernando was proudest to share that through Cargill’s community cares program, they are improving an elementary school, building fire and police stations, and parks in the impoverished community that abuts the port. Albeit a touching gesture, none of these measures address the contamination of the city’s water.

The second half of our meeting took place on a yacht on the Rio Paraguay. We arrived at a dock to board a yacht which would take us on a tour of the planned port, the water utility, as well as other industries that operate in the area. In actuality, the tour amounted to very little beyond the relief of a cool breeze in 90 degree weather. We saw about six workers reinforcing the bank of the river in preparation for construction of the port. We saw the water utility, which indeed was incredibly close to the Cargill site. And, Fernando and Francisco were adamant about pointing out the other industries already operating in the vicinity. Their argument recalled the common childhood refrain, “They’re doing it, so why can’t I?”

On the night of our meeting , we participated in a public event and press conference with partners from Paraguay and Brazil to discuss international movements against Cargill. Even though the Cargill port was approved at the end of December 2007, these partners in Paraguay along with others continue to fight against it. Our consent cannot be won by a yacht ride. There are plans to take this case to the high court in Paraguay in order to revoke the license for construction. RAN will support the struggle and stand by our partners until the end.

Rural campesino communities in Paraguay are isolated from each other by many conditions: poor roads, distance, lack of bus fare (or lack of buses), shoddy communication, and a self-reliance that keeps them bound to the land. And yet there is something that has evolved simultaneously in many of these separate communities – a consciousness that they share despite the isolation. The unfortunate commonality between them is a fear and loathing of industrial soy production.

How it is possible that the internal discourse in so many communities has independently turned to the problems with industrial soy is a demonstration of the crop’s pervasiveness, in fact, invasiveness in Paraguay. In reaction to soil, air and water contamination from pesticides; birth defect, disease and miscarriages from agrochemicals; as well as deforestation and displacement, campesino communities are organizing themselves to fight the colonization of their lands by powerful soy producers and multinational corporations like Cargill and Monstanto, which drive the soy zeitgeist.

In five days, we visited seven communities across the state of San Pedro. Up to fifty people came to meet with us at times – despite heavy rains and flooded roads – and we listened as each visit produced the same story. The land surrounding these communities was once subtropical forest. Then it was bulldozed and planted with soy. Now a thin strip of dirt road separates the first row of homes (those that are left) from the first row of soy, and thus the first line of chemical spray.

Accidentally, on our trip out to the communities, we came upon an agrobusiness convention hosted by Dekalpar, a company that commercializes products such as transgenic seeds, pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers. Dekalpar’s largest client? Monsanto. They called their exhibition Dia del Campo or “A Day in the Country”. The irony of this is that the traditional campo of Latin America is a place inhabited by…well…campesinos, i.e. self-sufficient farmers who work the land for subsistence rather than for profit. The field exhibition represented exactly the opposite – a corporate P.R. event attended by foreigners and wealthy Paraguayan land owners, who sell genetically modified soy and corn to exporters like Cargill and ADM, and who were there to check out the latest innovations in crop science and chemicals.

So what does a Dia del Campo really look like? In the first community of Toropiru, we met with a teacher named Samuel, who took us about ten meters behind his house to where the soyfields begin. His neighbors recently fled the area due to repeated fumigations, selling their land for an amount that afforded them one-eighth the acreage they owned here and even more remote. In the same community, Dekalpar is bribing and arming community members to fight their neighbors who resist the soy invasion. In another community called Colonia Barbera, we were shown a picture of a one-eyed pig born with a deformed snout that resembled a small elephant trunk. This pig was born next door to a school and its strange mutation is attributed to chemical exposure from the adjacent soy field – a soy field which, by the way, is labeled “responsible soy”.

Further out, in one of the few remaining forested areas of San Pedro, the Yaguarete forest is on the brink of total conversion to soy. The neighboring community (along with many others) has experienced intensifying criminalization by intruding land purchasers, who are in turn supported by the state to justify police presence and militarization around major areas of agricultural interest. By accusing campesinos of “terrorism”, they are able to make a case for expulsion, which clears the way for the installation of soy.

The examples could go on and on, for in a country with intense corruption, huge disparity in wealth and an ever-increasing infiltration of multinational corporations, there are extreme forces at work against the poor and disenfranchised. But the campesino communities that we have met with will not be victimized. They have plans. They will not be removed. They are occupying lands, writing declarations, organizing protests, holding meetings, educating each other, working with national NGOs, questioning the agricultural industrial complex, and calling out to the international community to support their struggle. As one community leader put it, “We are going to fight. I don’t know how it will work out, but we have to.”

The trip between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Asuncion, Paraguay, takes 16 hours by bus. Although about 10 of those hours pass in darkness, the remaining 6 leave no guess as to what whizzing views one misses during the bumpy night. There is roughly only one thing to look at as it expands in every direction, dominating the landscape on both sides of the road and spreading on and on toward the horizon. It’s soy, and it grows for as far as the eye can see.

These super-sized soy fields are the sowing of super-sized corporations that are proliferating their monocultured, genetically-engineered fields throughout South America. Look in the “Rural” section of Argentina’s Saturday news pages and you will find rows and rows of ads for millions of hectares of land in the Paraguayan savannas. One article in the same inset boasts that with soy at the helm, transgenic crops now cover 20 million hectares throughout Argentina. Another announces that Monstanto is ready to commercialize its second generation “Round-up Ready” (RR2) soy in Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. A newsprint catalog of the industry’s worst transgressions on human rights and the environment framed as the “Superlatives” section in an agribusiness yearbook, these articles give us a look at who’s who in South American soy development.

The soy fever is so virulent that there is even a website dedicated to selling land in the virgin Gran Chaco ecosystem of Paraguay and developing it for soy production. The website boasts that the climate is perfect and soil fertility above average in this area, albeit there are still limitations like lack of roads. Don’t worry, though, this website also provides ideas for how to overcome such obstacles on your path to producing soy.

Besides the endless rows of soy, the bus passes hundreds of different signs that say things like “Sulfosato”. These strange and pseudo-scientific names are the trademarked lab results of biotech and pesticide companies encouraging soy farmers to increase their yield with genetically altered seed or kill off pests with industrial chemicals. There are also innumerable multiples of signs that read “disponible” (available), referring to plots of land being sold for soy production.

What does all of this mean? It means that Argentina and Paraguay are gripped by the soy rush. As soy for export (and increasingly for the production of Agrofuels) grabs all the land it can find, other crop production and cattle lands are displaced, putting additional pressure on intact forests across South America. Meanwhile, subsistence farmers and rural communities are shoved aside or bulldozed over. Tomorrow we head to some of those communities to see how they are fighting the agribusiness giants that are taking over the weekend paper and much of the continent.

Agrofuels are being put forward as a solution to our climate crisis by agribusiness giants like ADM and Cargill, auto makers like GM, and petroleum companies like BP with their own interest and profit motive in mind. They have effectively hijacked the good intentions, true innovation, and essence of family farmers, environmentalists, and communities throughout the world that were pursuing locally produced, small-scale biofuels for local energy needs.

For this reason, Rainforest Action Network along with allies Food First, Grassroots International, Family Farm Defenders, Global Justice Ecology Project, and the Student Trade Justice Campaign, held a press conference on Tuesday (listen to it here) announcing the first official call for a U.S. moratorium on agrofuels. The call for a moratorium is part of a growing movement worldwide which recognizes that there is a need for policy makers to reevaluate the incentives and subsidies which are currently driving a global boom for agrofuels. This agrofuels boom is driving deforestation, climate change, and is linked to human rights abuses from the Gran Chaco in Paraguay to the Brazilian Amazon, to Kalimantan in Indonesia and to Papua New Guinea in the Pacific.

Civil Society groups in Europe launched a similar moratorium over a year ago, and just two weeks ago the EU environment commissioner said that the social and environmental problems caused by agrofuels are “bigger than we thought they were.” As a result, the European Union is now rethinking their agrofuels targets. And in October 2007, Jean Ziegler the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food called for a five year moratorium on agrofuels production citing the rising prices of food worldwide and the impact that this is already having on the poorest people around the world.

We believe that the growing call for a moratorium on industrial agrofuels will help refocus attention on pursuing the genuine answers to our climate crisis, and away from snake oil solutions. One thing is certain: none of the real solutions can or will come at the expense of human rights, the environment, or the world’s most marginalized people, and certainly none should make the climate worse off.

Via Campesina is an international network that represents over 100 million small producers around the world, and is one of the strongest movements today advocating for food sovereignty.

This evening Rafael Alegria will be speaking on the subject of “Food, Fuel and La Via Campesina Struggle for Land Reform”, highlighting the increasing global demand for agrofuels and the impact on the world’s small farmers. The event starts at 7pm and is at the Women’s Building in San Francisco. The address is: 3453 18th Street.

Download the flyer here.

The international campaigning organization Pesticide Action Network was the first to designate December 3rd the Global “No Pesticides Use Day.” According to Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific (PANAP), an estimated 50 million people work in plantations in developing countries and an additional 500 million in other forms of agriculture, including as seasonal workers. Many of these people who work in agriculture are exposed daily to toxic agrochemicals. And, many others who live near agricultural land are indirectly exposed to harmful chemicals through the air, contaminated water and soil, and in their food.

This December 3rd, activists and civil society groups around the world organized actions to call attention to the harmful affects of agrochemicals. In Paraguay, where roundup ready soy is converting the country into what many call a “green desert” activists held a protest targeting U.S. agribusiness Cargill for their role in the expansion of this crop. Paraguay is now the fourth largest exporter of soybeans in the world. Click here to read the statement put out by the organizers of the Paraguay protests.

Minnesota-based grain giant Cargill is the main player leading Paraguay into the global soybean boom. Cargill initially entered Paraguay in 1978 to import hybrid seeds, and only began crushing soybeans in the country in 1991. It now owns the largest soybean plant in Paraguay, and has a network of 40 grain elevators and port facilities. Cargill is Paraguay’s number one exporter.

Roundup Ready soy, brought to you by Monsanto, is genetically modified to withstand massive amounts of the herbicide roundup. Soy cultivation in Paraguay leads to the dumping of more than 24 million liters of agro-chemicals in Paraguay every year. And many of the chemicals used have been rated Class I and II moderately and extremely hazardous pesticides by the World Health Organization.

At protests this week, Paraguayan activists dressed up to illustrate just how destructive soy production and the accompanying pesticide use is on campesinos, Indigenous communities, and the environment. They were specifically targeting Cargill because of the company’s plans to build a mega-port in the capital Asuncion. This port will be situated just 500 meters upstream from the intake of the public water utility that is responsible for getting clean drinking water to the over one million people that live in the city.

Civil society groups, environmentalists, social justice and health activists have been protesting the proposed Cargill port. They are concerned that the facility will contaminate the water with pesticide runoff from the soy, and will prevent people from having access to clean drinking water. This week, RAN sent out an email action alert to our supporters asking them to sign a petition demanding that the Cargill port not be built. Our rainforest agribusiness campaign is working in solidarity with frontline community members and NGO allies in Paraguay to amplify their demands as we challenge U.S. agribusiness giants like ADM, Bunge, and Cargill.

Last month, RAN hosted a delegation of Indigenous and campesino leaders, and activists from communities on the frontline of palm and soy expansion. Campesino leader Francisco Avalos from San Pedro, Paraguay spoke powerfully about the repression that campesinos face when trying to resist soy encroachment. He showed pictures of children who were sick due to exposure from agrochemicals, and of the settlements of landless people being burnt down by the State. He also showed pictures of struggle and resistance. When our delegation passed through Minneapolis, the headquarter city of Cargill our delegates decided to write a letter and hand it directly to the company officials. Below is a a portion of Francisco’s letter:

“After the sprayings and fumigations of the soy, we invite you to come with your children, for at least a couple of minutes, to share this air that we breathe. We are sure that you will not like this. And, you will surely never return there again. It is very tortuous to constantly smell the odor of pesticides.

We passionately reject the presence of Cargill in our country because they are in no way contributing to improving the quality of life of our people. We demand that you leave our country. “

I wonder if any of the Cargill executives are interested in taking Francisco up on his offer “to share this air that we breath.” Perhaps, a better option would be for Cargill to stop the massive expansion of soy throughout South America, and control and regulate the indiscriminate use of toxic agrochemicals in their operations.

Minneapolis, of course, besides being home to ally organizations and super-sustainable cafe’s is also the headquarter city of U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill. For several of the delegates, no trip to Minneapolis would have seemed complete without a visit to the Cargill headquarters and a face-to-face with some of the execs. Francisco Avalos, from Paraguay, Hiparidi Top’Tiro from Brazil, and Lynette Hambuga from Papua New Guinea decided that they would write a collective letter to Cargill enumerating their grievances against the company, and hand the letter directly to the executives. So, on Tuesday, November 6th the rainforest agribusiness campaign team accompanied our delegates as they handed their letter over to Cargill. (PDF of the letter.)

We didn’t surprise folks at Cargill with our visit; they knew in advance that we were coming. When we arrived at the company compound, we were greeted and told to put name tags on, and then ushered up a staircase and to a back room. We sat across from each other at a long board room table–delegates and RAN staff on one side, Cargill on the other. Sitting across from us were some of Cargill’s corporate affairs executives from Malaysia, Brazil, and Argentina. According to Cargill, they all happened to be in town already (odd coincidence perhaps–these are some of the very countries that our campaign is most concerned about). After a quick go-round of introductions, Lynette Hambuga from Papua New Guinea stood up and presented the letter on behalf of the delegates. After the letter was exchanged, the air in the room felt slightly heavier and the folks on the other side of the table realized that we weren’t there to listen to corporate greenwashing or self-congratulatory talk. The delegates made their message clear: they don’t have time for more excuses or false promises.

The letter is our “shot across the bow” before we publicly launch our campaign exposing the role of U.S. agribusiness companies in the expansion of destructive palm oil and soy plantations around the globe. Palm oil and soy plantations destroy critical habitat, contribute to climate change, and are linked to egregious human rights violations.

Illinois-based ADM is one of the world’s largest agricultural processors and grain traders. Since its formation in 1923, ADM has been known as a food and ingredients company but in the last couple of years, the company has shifted its priority away from ingredient processing and towards biofuels production. With an ever-increasing global demand for biofuels, ADM is seeking to cash in. Woertz, who comes to ADM from Chevron, has set her sights on palm oil and soy as crops with great promise to supply the biofuels boom.

The rapid expansion of these crops along with global demand is cause for great concern. As we wrote to Woertz:

“Soy and palm oil plantations are expanding at an alarming rate into some of the last primary forests in the world – including tropical forests in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Ghana, Argentina, Paraguay, and the Brazilian Amazon – as well as in the Cerrado grasslands of central Brazil. These ecosystems represent some of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Plantations threaten the habitat of more than 130,000 plants and animals in the Amazon and Cerrado ecosystems. They threaten the survival of such keystone species as the Amazon river dolphin, giant river otters and jaguars in the Amazon, as well as orangutans, Sumatran tigers and Asian elephants in Indonesia, and countless other species in tropical ecosystems around the world. Industrial agricultural plantations also threaten the survival of hundreds of Indigenous cultures, including some with little or no contact with the outside world.”

The letter also raised concerns about the conversion of forests into palm and soy plantations and how this is contributing to climate change.

“The burning of rainforests and their subsequent conversion into plantations has led Indonesia and Brazil to become the world’s third and fourth largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. We need U.S. companies to lead the world in helping to solve this problem, not to make it worse.”

Referring to Woertz’s previous oily jobs, the letter says:

“The world has changed dramatically since you started at Gulf Oil thirty years ago; in fact, the public’s commitment to environmental values has strengthened dramatically even since you became CEO of ADM last year. Public support for corporations that take responsible action is growing, so ADM has much to gain by implementing rigorous environmental and human rights standards. At the same time, the global movement for social justice is growing, such that your company could lose its social license to operate unless it adapts to a changing world.”

The letter closes by calling for ADM to address specific demands that our campaign has compiled through consultations with NGO’s, activists and affected communities in the regions that ADM is operating in:

“It is imperative that ADM take basic steps such as disavowing the use of slave labor, respecting the rights and wishes of Indigenous people and local communities, and making a commitment not to contribute to further deforestation of high conservation-value ecosystems.”

RAN’s agribusiness campaign will be publicly launched in October 2007. Stay tuned for the latest updates.