Soy for meat - ecosystem threat
"Look what they have to eat. I know this, from before I was liberated. Pure genetically manipulated soy. Every meal. And it all came from Argentina because there, they produce millions of tons of soy for our animal feed, they can't use its fertile land to grow healthy food for its own population. I don't get this world."
In the South American countries of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, the massive expansion of soy production for export has catastrophic consequences for rural communities and ways of living. Soybean cultivation is most profitable when done in a capital intensive and labour extensive way and has displaced more labour intensive production such as vegetables, cotton, and dairy farming. While large parts of Argentina and Brazil are already covered in soy plantations, it is much less known that Paraguay has become the world’s fourth largest soybean exporter.
In 2006, nearly 2.5 million hectares of soy was sown in Paraguay alone, an area comparable to the German State Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Paraguayan authorities are planning an increase to 4 million hectares. According to the Paraguayan NGO BASE.IS, “…The expansion of mono-cultures “green deserts” such as large scale soy production promotes a mechanised agriculture without small farmers; without people. All mono-cultures are damaging to the ecosystems they supplant; they destroy biological and agricultural diversity, poison water sources and the soil and undermine the food security and sovereignty of the people and their countries. They cause poverty, unemployment and the eviction and exodus of communities in rural areas.”
In Argentina, nearly all soy grown is “RoundupReady” varieties from the biotech multinational Monsanto. This genetically modified soy plant is made resistant to the “kill all” herbicide “Roundup.” It survives intensive spraying while all other plants and weeds around it are killed. The use of this variety is advancing in Paraguay and Brazil as well.
Soy- an ecosystem threat
The explosion of soy cultivation has caused the destruction of millions of hectares of forest and savannah with extremely high and valuable biodiversity. Between May 2000 and August 2006, Brazil lost nearly 150,000 km2 of forest - an area larger than Greece. Recently, soy beans have become one of the most important contributors to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Soybean production directly causes some forest clearing, but has a much greater impact on deforestation by expanding into savannah and transitional forests, thereby pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers even deeper into the forest frontier. Soybean farming is also a key economic and political impetus for new highways and infrastructure projects, which accelerate deforestation even further.
The large scale monoculture agriculture with its large machinery and terminating pesticide spraying replaces the technique of turning the soil to get rid of weeds. This, together with lack of crop rotation, causes increased erosion by both water and wind. On average, the production of 1 kg of soy beans means the loss of 4 kg of soil.
Agriculture sector - climate polluter
Over the past few months, the media has been full of worrysome information on climate change. Agriculture is a major contributor to this, mostly due to the keeping of livestock. Keeping livestock is responsible for at least 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all of the traffic worldwide. The gases come from burning fossil fuels in the production of artificial fertilizers, methane emissions from both the animals themselves and from dealing with manure, and the use of fossil fuels in producing animal fodder. Methane especially is a very powerful greenhouse gas, 21 times more harmful per kilogram than CO2. For the production of animal fodder and the need for grazing grounds, there is clear cutting and burning of forest areas. Burning down forests and the oxidation of carbon by soil loss causes massive emissions of CO2. As lost soil is not replaced, this process has been called “agricultural mining," leading to local temperature rise and desertification, and not to mention the effects of transporting all the feed, manure, animals, and the end product – the meat. According to the recent report 'Livestock's long shadow' (2006) from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the livestock sector is responsible for the following worldwide human influenced production of:
CO (2.9%)
methane (35-40%)
nitrous oxides (65%) and
ammonia (64%).
links to:
Soy in numbers http://www.pig8soy.org/en/node/50
WTO for Soy http://www.pig8soy.org/en/node/56
The Structural Adjustment Program Monoculture Drive http://www.pig8soy.org/en/node/57
