Latin America: the downside of the GM revolution.

• Author: Ruiz-Marrero, Carmelo
• Position: Genetically modified crops

As genetically modified soybeans take over vast tracts in South America and reports flow in of genetic contamination of local corn in Mesoamerica, grassroots resistance to biotech crops has also grown. The protests form part of people's movements across the hemisphere that tie together a rejection of neoliberalism and agribusiness, and call for land reform, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture.

Most of the land area devoted to genetically modified (GM) crops is planted with only one crop: soy. And this GM soy has been developed by a single corporation, US-based Monsanto, with a single trait in mind: resistance to Monsanto's own Roundup herbicide--hence its name, Roundup Ready. Put another way, GM crops, which have been planted commercially since the mid-1990s, have been developed for the most part with the sole purpose of increasing Monsanto's sales of its seeds and herbicide by allowing it to sell both as an integrated package.

Soy in South America: An environmental disaster

Nowhere in the world have the effects of GM crops been felt as intensely as in South America. Soybeans currently take up over 16 million hectares (61,776 square miles) of farmland in Argentina (more than 10 times the area of the state of Connecticut), and over 20 million hectares (77,220 sq. mi.) in Brazil (just over one-fifth of Brazil's total cultivated land and almost a third of the state of Texas). Bolivia and Paraguay together account for at least three million hectares of soy (11,583 sq. mi.). Soybeans are also making significant inroads into Uruguayan agriculture.

Almost all of the continent's soy crop is of Monsanto's GM Roundup Ready variety (RR).

Roundup has been found to cause dysfunctional cell division that may be linked to cancers, and children born to users of glyphosate had elevated neurobehavioral defects. In Ontario, Canada, epidemiological research found that glyphosate exposure almost doubles the risk of miscarriages in advanced pregnancies. And a French team led by Caen University biochemist Gilles-Eric Seralini discovered that human placental cells are very sensitive to Roundup, and that even in very low doses glyphosate can disrupt the endocrine system.

The soy boom, lauded as a success story by landowners, agribusiness, biotechnology corporations, and South American governments, has come at an enormous environmental and social cost.

"Large-scale soybean monocultures have rendered Amazonian soils unusable," according to professors Miguel...