The Meaning Of Spandau Ballet

That does not speak (Doing a bit of memory) Floreal

280 000 Argentina live in large families of 22 indigenous peoples, and 220 thousand peasant families with at least 1.5 million people. They produce soy or subscribe to agribusiness, plant food and raise animals for consumption and have a special relationship with the land, not seen as a means for business, are understood as part of it, its culture, its history and a common good of future generations. These two central actors, indigenous peoples and peasants, were systematically excluded from the debate last month, where the four most traditional and conservative institutions of the Argentine countryside made a lockout is unprecedented in this country.

Rural Society (SRA), Rural Confederation (CRA), Confederation of Agricultural Interco (Coninagro) and Agrarian Federation (FAA) were mobilized and food shortage major cities for one main objective: increasing profitability, blessed by the price for soy. The farmers, large or small, at no time were at risk of economic loss, but (after a state tax measure) were on the verge of earning less money than expected.

For weeks, protests and verbal crosses of varying colors, traditional institutions and the government kept silent about the following topics: Business

. In the global agribusiness market, Argentina is seen as a model student. In 1997, Argentina were harvested eleven million tons of transgenic soybeans and used six million hectares. Ten years later, in 2007 the harvest reached 47 million tonnes, comprising 16.6 million hectares. It is the third largest exporter of soybeans (after the United States and Brazil) and the first oil. Exports of soybeans and soybean products in 2007 were for 11,000 million dollars. Argentina no longer produces food and the country can not eat soy. The demand comes from Europe and China, where it is used for animal feed.

Evictions. The agribusiness model based on transgenic soya evicted in the last ten years, 300 thousand families of farmers and indigenous people, who were to the slums of large cities.

sockets. In just four years, and the advance of soy plantations, ceased to be 1,108,669 hectares of forests, 277 hectares per year, equivalent to 760 per day, 32 acres per hour.

concentration. The current agricultural model, based on export-intensive production, producing higher concentrations. The last agricultural census confirms ten percent of so-called "farms" larger focus 78 percent of the land, while 60 percent of the smallest farms are divided only five percent of the country's arable land. Unemployment

. Thousand hectares of soybean can be handled by only four people. A dairy farm in that area requires, at least twenty workers. If that piece of land was in the hands of indigenous peasant families, would work for 350 people.

Health. Argentine fields were sprayed last year with 165 million liters of glyphosate, an agrochemical reported to cause birth defects in newborns, spontaneous abortions, cancer and death. The allegations suggest the higher seed the world: Monsanto.

Companies. Companies with higher profitability soybean (exporters and suppliers of inputs) are Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Bayer, Nidera, Cargill, Bunge, Dreyfus, Dow and BASF, among others. None of them were questioned in the recent conflict.

Farm. 1.3 million people work in the field. The general salary is 1250 pesos per month. He is considered by the State, the lowest paid workers, who have the worst working conditions and the most exploited. Yet they are paid with food and substandard housing, in conditions close to slavery. In addition, 75 percent of them are "black" without employment contract, health insurance, retirement contributions or accident insurance.

differences. During the lockout, was used to spearhead the status of a "small farmer with 100 acres. In purely economic terms, each hectare can be rented for 200 pesos per month, 20 thousand dollars every thirty days, 240 thousand dollars a year just to rent their land. If the owner is "small producer", how a family should be called a peasant or Indian with twenty acres, one hundred goats and gardens for subsistence?

Future. The agribusiness industry is in Argentina next two goals: to introduce your business ten million hectares (to the detriment of family farmers) and biofuels (the creation of fuel from soybeans), a business seeking to build on four million hectares of rural and indigenous. Another

model. The Indian National Peasant Movement (MNCI), composed of 15,000 families in seven provinces, was not included in the discussions. The MNCI, with similarities to the Landless Movement and the Mexican Zapatistas, fosters the organization of the poor and marginalized of the Argentine countryside, the rural base of the pyramid. Two of its key proposals are comprehensive agrarian reform and food sovereignty, which implies a changing agricultural model. Merits of the four traditional institutions, and the government would rather not talk.

* Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero, Via Campesina. Formed by 9000 families from the mountain, living in what they produce and reject the soy model.

Released April 25, 2008.