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ARGENTINA: Countryside No Longer
Synonymous with Healthy Living
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES (IPS) - Once a serene
refuge from urban pollution and chaos, the
Argentine countryside has now become a place
fraught with risks for many local residents.
The massive use of pesticides on fields of
soy, the country’s top export, is creating a
"health catastrophe" in the rural sector,
environmentalists warn.
A report by the Rural Reflection Group (GRR),
a local environmental organisation, points
to an increase in health problems in the
countryside, such as cases of cancer at
early ages, birth defects, lupus, kidney
problems, respiratory ailments and
dermatitis, based on the accounts of rural
doctors, experts and the residents of dozens
of farming towns.
The GRR has been carrying out a campaign
since 2006 to identify towns affected by the
spraying of glyphosate, the herbicide
tolerated by the genetically modified (GM)
soybeans planted in Argentina, which kills
all plants other than the crop itself.
When glyphosate is sprayed from planes, the
most efficient means of application, it
drifts onto nearby populated areas, says the
report "Stop the Spraying".
Soy boom
Fifty percent of Argentina’s farmland is
planted in soy – a proportion that rises
above 80 percent in the central province of
Córdoba, for example.
This South American country exports around
48 million tons of soy a year to China and
India. And according to official figures,
some 200 million litres of glyphosate a year
are used on the crop.
Because it is easy to grow, and due to the
rising demand in the Asian markets, soy has
expanded in Argentina since the mid-1990s at
the expense of other crops, livestock and
forests.
But apparently not only agricultural
diversity has been lost.
Soybean fields have replaced the protective
green belts that traditionally surrounded
rural towns, consisting of family gardens,
dairy and small livestock farms, and fruit
orchards, leaving local populations exposed
to the damages of aerial spraying, says the
study.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in
Roundup, a weedicide patented by U.S.
biotech giant Monsanto and sold along with
its Roundup Ready GM soy.
The company denies that Roundup, if properly
used, is harmful to human health.
Glyphosate is also the product used in
aerial fumigation of illegal coca
plantations in Colombia. Damages to
agriculture and local residents caused by
spraying along the Ecuadorian border have
been protested by that country.
Weed and pest control is mainly carried out
with glyphosate and the pesticide endosulfan.
People living in the neighbourhood of
Ituzaingó Anexo, in the suburbs of the
capital of the province of Córdoba, have
been demanding a halt to the spraying since
2000.
After several lawsuits and health studies,
the courts ordered that the spraying be
temporarily suspended in areas near the
neighbourhood in late 2008.
As part of its "Stop the Spraying" campaign,
the GRR has backed complaints and legal
action brought by local residents and
gathered testimonies and medical histories
of people affected by the spraying. The
final study was presented this year to the
federal courts and to Argentine President
Cristina Fernández.
GRR lawyer Osvaldo Fornari told IPS that the
federal courts were asked to investigate the
approval process for herbicides and
pesticides. He said that based on the
"precautionary principle," a cautionary
measure should be taken, such as the
suspension of the sale and use of products
suspected of polluting the countryside and
causing health damages.
The group’s goal is to get the suspension of
spraying in Ituzaingó Anexo to be adopted at
a national level, as a preventive curb on
the use of the more toxic agrochemicals. The
environmentalists argue that provincial
authorities have a hard time curtailing the
use of the chemicals, whose use was
authorised by national officials in the
1990s.
The activists also asked the president to
declare an environmental emergency in
connection with the problem.
Fernández ordered the creation of a
committee, coordinated by the Health
Ministry, to investigate causes and effects
related to the chemicals, work in the area
of prevention, and provide "assistance and
treatment" to people who have been affected
by herbicides and pesticides.
The presidential decree also ordered the
adoption of guidelines for the rational use
of agrochemicals, and, if necessary, their
"elimination."
Agronomist Alida Gallardo, an organic farmer
in the Buenos Aires province town of Trenque
Lauquen, said the problem in that area is
"extremely serious."
"We live on the outskirts of town. Next to
us are fields of sprayed soybeans. Three
years ago they burned our crops, but now it
is more under control," she told IPS.
"Soybeans brought with them the use of these
toxic chemicals, and now they are being
applied to other products, like wheat.
People have to understand that the pollution
is not only limited to the countryside, but
affects urban food consumers as well," she
said.
Another farmer, Omar Barzeta, who belongs to
the Agrarian Federation in the northeastern
province of Santa Fe, told IPS that "toxic
chemicals can be used with caution, because
it is necessary to fight weeds and insects.
But the drift must always be controlled.
"There is a law that bans spraying in
populated areas, but it is true that it is
not really respected. The municipal
government should make sure that it is
enforced, but with the consensus of everyone
– farmers and local residents alike," he
added.
In Fornari’s view, pollution with glyphosate
is a consequence of the "agro-export model"
based on the intensive cultivation of soy.
"The essence of the model of soybean
production is a deserted countryside,
without farmers; it is a model that foments
the depopulation of rural areas."
The GRR report notes that soybeans fields
reach all the way up to the outer streets in
some towns. Farm machinery and containers
used in spraying are washed and stored in
urban areas, and soybeans covered in toxic
substances are stored in silos located in
the midst of homes, schools and other
buildings.
The personal accounts compiled in the report
come from people in dozens of towns in the
provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Entre
Ríos and Santa Fe, the heart of the
country’s breadbasket, where locals are
demanding buffer zones around populated
areas, which would be off-limits to
fumigation planes.
Healthy living?
Thirty years ago, living in the countryside
was synonymous with healthy living, but now
"it is suicidal," said Mario Córcora from
Junín, a city in the northern part of Buenos
Aires province, which has been heavily
affected by glyphosate spraying.
In Santa Fe, people from the Malvinas
neighbourhood in the city of Rosario
successfully fought for the relocation of
eight grain silo facilities from urban
areas, complaining that they were causing
damages to the health of local residents.
A study by the Italiano Garibaldi Hospital
in Rosario showed that in six towns in the
region, the incidence of testicular and
gastric cancer in males was three times
higher than the national average; the
incidence of liver cancer was 10 times
higher; and the number of cases of pancreas
and lung cancer was two times higher.
The Córdoba province town of Alta Gracia,
where the family of legendary
Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che"
Guevara – an asthmatic boy at the time -
moved in the 1930s, is now one of the places
affected by crop spraying.
Today, someone like Che Guevara would find
it impossible to live in Alta Gracia, once
known as a retreat for people with
respiratory ailments, for its dry climate
and fresh air.
In Basavilbaso, in the northeastern province
of Entre Ríos, 43-year-old Fabián Tomasi,
who used to work spraying crops, has lost
muscle mass and suffers from infections in
the joints, skin problems, and digestive and
respiratory ailments that force him to sleep
sitting up. None of his health problems have
been traced to any factor other than
exposure to toxic agrochemicals.
Another case that has been studied in the
same province is that of the Portillo family
in the village of Costa Las Masitas. The
father, Walter, is in a wheelchair because
of nerve damage. One of his sons died at the
age of eight after suffering fever, vomiting
and headaches. Two of the boy’s young
cousins also died.
The justice system is investigating whether
the river that runs through the area is
polluted. Machinery from nearby farms is
washed in the river, where the children swam
and which serves as a source of water for
the family and their livestock.
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