Judges Prpose 1,500 km barrier against Soy Pesticides

The author of The World According to Monsanto testified in two lawsuits concerning crimes against humanity in Argentina, where her investigation Death Squadrons: The French School helped shed light on the terrorist acts committed by the State. There she agreed to be interviewed and commented on her new book.

The problem of soy cultivation is very serious. I will say that I am happy because at the very least my investigations were taken into account. When I came in 2009 to present both the book and the film, even Cristina Kirchner's Minister of Health interviewed me. There was then a sense that 'soy-ization' was a catastrophe across the countryside, which I'd said as far back as 2005. On an ecological level, for example, this was due to the collapse of Santiago del Estero [center of soy production]; in terms of public health, environmental pollution with pesticides; in terms of nutritional stability, soy competes against the cultivation of things like rice, lentils, and everything else. Instituting restrictions on this was, in my mind, one way of putting the brakes on this crazed planting of soy everywhere.

we don't want to continue like this”—because otherwise, this country, famous for its cows and milk, will find itself without either. On a positive note, when I was last here I met with the Association of Environmental Lawyers of Argentina, who later initiated a legal action. Now there are judges that have declared that, at the very least, fumigation has to happen at least 1500 kilometers [~932 miles] from residential areas. Before, they would spread pesticides all the way up to school entranceways—I was in one school where the children were sick, they were vomiting. It was mind-boggling. So we had to lay out our case and support those decisions once they were made, in order to slow down this process. But for a lot of people, it's not an issue, because they don't understand what's at stake. Transgenic soy is ending agriculture as we know it; it's the last era of the “Green Revolution”: it's a very centralized model, with companies that plant the seeds and companies that spread the pesticides. The capital which supports this system comes from investment funds called seed pools. It has nothing to do with family farming, which for me is the only kind that could possibly guarantee food safety and health.