July 30, 2008
 
Argentina's soy boom may cost the country dear, experts say
 
 

The boom in soy planting in Argentina may come back to haunt farmers years later, a conservation group has warned.

 

The concentration on one crop type exposes the country to extensive damage to the land as well as social displacement, apart from the financial risks associated with putting all their eggs in one basket, conservation experts told Inter Press Service (IPS) news.

 

Jorge Cappato of Fundación Proteger warned that soy farming is very similar to the 'boom and bust' model adopted by the fishing, mining and logging industries.

 

Currently, more than half the country's cultivated land, or 16.6 million hectares, are used to grow soy, at the expense of other crops and livestock rearing, Cappato said.

 
The expansion is likely to accelerate after the recent repeal of the controversial hike in export taxes.

 

Farmers, in the face of enormous profits, are unlikely to stop their expansion, Cappato said, adding that Argentina's wheat and milk production may soffer as a result.

 
Argentina's soy acreage grew 126 percent over the space of a decade, and according to non-governmental organisations, soy has displaced native forests, robbing the country of their wealth of biodiversity.

 

Soy planters have also taken over land used for family agriculture and belonging to indigenous peoples.

 

The country is estimated to have lost 2.5 million hectares of native forests in the past nine years, mostly due to soy planting, according to a Greenpeace representative.

 
Although the country has passed a law for the protection and sustainable use of forests, it is feared that the will to apply it may wither with the lure of handsome profits provided by soy.
 
The land is also increasingly filled chock-full of herbicides.

 

Glyphosate, the herbicide used in combination with transgenic soy, pollutes groundwater, and aerial spraying is becoming a health hazard for thousands of rural people.

 

Last year, 180 million litres of Glyphosate was sold in Argentina, compared to just1 million litres in the early 1990s, Agronomist Walter Pengue, a researcher with the Ecology of Landscape and the Environment Group (GEPAMA) at the University of Buenos Aires, told IPS.


According to Pengue, "Johnson grass" or "Aleppo grass," a weed that is becoming resistant to glyphosate, has already appeared in six provinces.

 

Now, farm groups are considering using stronger herbicides whose use was discontinued in the 1980s as it was considered too toxic. 

 

Furthermore, the soil is becoming less fertile, even with large quantities of fertiliser, conservation experts said.

 
Since the 1970s, when soy began to be planted in Argentina, the soil has lost a net 11.3 million tonnes of nitrogen, 2.5 million tonnes of phosphorus, and very high amounts of other nutrients, Pengue said.
 
Farming analysts also say that the soy model of agriculture is not socially sustainable. "There is short term prosperity in some cities because of the high prices, said Pengue. But this kind of bonanza "does not amount to development," he said.
 
"A country cannot depend exclusively on the price of one product, it has to produce a broad range of foods, as Brazil is doing," he said.
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