by HUGH DAVIES
Protest at Congreso to call for justice against the assasination of Miguel Galvan PHOTO/Mocase-VC
The reason for the men’s murders was that they refused to give up their land to multi-national soybean plantation companies. Whilst Galván’s attackers are yet to be identified, in Ferreyra’s case it is widely claimed that a large landowner from the area hired hitmen to remove him from his path.
In the six months after Ferreyra’s tragic death, incidents of conflict between large agribusiness and peasants decreased, but since then, the expansion of soy production has continued and so have the forced evictions of peasants and indigenous people from lands they have occupied for centuries.
Expansion of Soy and Agribusiness in Argentina
In 1996, Carlos Menem’s government approved a law that granted farmers permission to cultivate transgenic soybeans in Argentina. The decision brought about a drastic and rapid change within the country’s agricultural sector. Argentina allowed for the cultivation of genetically modified soybeans without carrying out their own tests, instead using only those provided by the multinational agribusiness Monsanto.
The economy was struggling and Menem sought large corporate contracts that could be seen as evidence of potential future recovery. Within a year, 11 million tonnes of soy were harvested from an area spanning 6 million hectares. Fast forward 15 years to today, and the entire country bares an alarming resemblance to a giant field of bioengineered soybeans. Argentina is the third largest producer of soy in the world and is responsible for one third of worldwide soybean sales. A staggering 97% of the soy harvested is exported worldwide.
Today soybean cultivation occupies more than half of Argentina’s productive land. However, long before the arrival of the multinational soybean plantation companies, the land was largely farmed by local and indigenous peasants. In 1988, there were 422,000 small farms based in Argentina’s countryside. By 2002, this number had fallen by almost 25%.
The Argentina Independent for more