The gigantic Gran Chaco forest spreads across northern Argentina and its neighbouring countries Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. Second only to the Amazon in South America for its size and biodiversity, the Gran Chaco covers 250,000 sq miles of dry forest, which is being cut down faster than scientists can study it. Argentina has cleared nearly a quarter of its native forests. Much of that newly cleared land has been turned over to the soya bean crop. The sight of the horseback “gaucho”, Argentina’s equivalent of the US cowboy, trailed by dogs, has disappeared from the landscape. Many landowners have knocked down their farmhouses to make more space for soya bean.
“Argentina is in a forest emergency,” says Natalia Machain, director of Greenpeace Argentina.
"Argentina’s forests are going under the axe,” says Toby Gardner, an environmental expert at the Stockholm Environment Initiative intent on providing traceability for South America’s exports.
Around 43m tonnes of soya bean meal, soya oil and soya bean a year floods out of Argentina and into Russia, the Middle East, Australia and Asia. Argentina is Europe’s largest single supplier of soya bean meal, providing more than a third of total European soya meal imports, 9.8m tonnes out of a total 27.1m in 2016. And the UK is particularly dependent on Argentine soya. In the year up to August 2018, just over 50% of all imported soya meal came from Argentina; 1m tonnes. Argentina relies on soya bean for financial buoyancy. The commodity is the backbone of its economy.
Argentina’s congress passed a law that went into effect in 2009 dividing the country’s forestland into red (untouchable), yellow (mixed use) and green (available to deforest) areas. Unfortunately, the law has been honoured more in the breach than in the observance, with individual provinces authorising vast deforestation projects in red and yellow protected zones. In Salta, for example, more than 170,000 protected hectares – an area larger than Greater London – have gone under the bulldozer since the law came into force. Scientists estimate that Salta has lost nearly 20% of its green cover in the last two decades.
“What producers have done to get around the forest law is obtain written statements from community chiefs agreeing to deforestation in exchange for houses and water deliveries,” says Ana Alvarez, a lawyer who defends indigenous rights. “These statements, often signed with a thumbprint by Wichís who cannot read or write Spanish, are then used by landowners to obtain deforestation permits from the province.”
“Argentina is in a forest emergency,” says Natalia Machain, director of Greenpeace Argentina.
"Argentina’s forests are going under the axe,” says Toby Gardner, an environmental expert at the Stockholm Environment Initiative intent on providing traceability for South America’s exports.
Around 43m tonnes of soya bean meal, soya oil and soya bean a year floods out of Argentina and into Russia, the Middle East, Australia and Asia. Argentina is Europe’s largest single supplier of soya bean meal, providing more than a third of total European soya meal imports, 9.8m tonnes out of a total 27.1m in 2016. And the UK is particularly dependent on Argentine soya. In the year up to August 2018, just over 50% of all imported soya meal came from Argentina; 1m tonnes. Argentina relies on soya bean for financial buoyancy. The commodity is the backbone of its economy.
Argentina’s congress passed a law that went into effect in 2009 dividing the country’s forestland into red (untouchable), yellow (mixed use) and green (available to deforest) areas. Unfortunately, the law has been honoured more in the breach than in the observance, with individual provinces authorising vast deforestation projects in red and yellow protected zones. In Salta, for example, more than 170,000 protected hectares – an area larger than Greater London – have gone under the bulldozer since the law came into force. Scientists estimate that Salta has lost nearly 20% of its green cover in the last two decades.
“What producers have done to get around the forest law is obtain written statements from community chiefs agreeing to deforestation in exchange for houses and water deliveries,” says Ana Alvarez, a lawyer who defends indigenous rights. “These statements, often signed with a thumbprint by Wichís who cannot read or write Spanish, are then used by landowners to obtain deforestation permits from the province.”
the Wichí people helplessly stand by as their home disappears. “We have no future,” says Amancio Angel despairingly. He is standing next to a clump of trees, the only home left to his clan after another swath of green was uprooted earlier this year by giant bulldozers hauling chains through the dwindling forest. “We used that forest to hunt and collect fruit, people from other communities got honey there, now life has become impossible,” says Amancio.
Now it is almost totally gone, part of 9,000 hectares (an area about one-and-a-half times the size of Manhattan island) earmarked for deforestation by just one out of a total 32 deforestation permits issued in recent years by Salta’s provincial authorities.
The US-based NGO Mighty Earth came up against a brick wall recently trying to determine what percentage of Argentina’s soya bean originates from deforested areas. “There is no legal requirement for companies to document the geographic origin of their soya bean or provide evidence that it has been produced legally,” Mighty Earth says in a report on the trip released earlier this year. “As such, it is currently impossible for European companies that source from these traders to ensure that the soya bean they are buying has not been produced through deforestation.” European supermarket chains frequently market their meat and dairy products as sustainable and locally produced, but the feed consumed by the livestock often comes from thousands of miles away, says Mighty Earth. “As such, the locally grown labelling only represents half the truth about the origins of this meat.”
“Soya bean devastates native forests and decreases the infiltration capacity of soils,” says Noemí Cruz, an indigenous campaigner for Greenpeace in Salta.. “Its associated agrochemicals pollute the water table and aquifers. In the Gran Chaco area there is little water to start with, so the contamination of natural water sources is doubly serious.” The problem is that the law sets only moderate monetary fines for offenders. “The fines are no deterrent at all, producers just factor them in as another cost.”
The salinisation of the soil, which renders it unusable for further planting, is another problem associated with soya bean production.
John Palmer, a British anthropologist who has been living in Salta since the 1990s says the message for the Wichí is: “Bye-bye indigenous people. This world is not a place for you. The world is a place for us, the big spenders, the big money grabbers – that’s who the world is for.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/26/soy-destruction-deforestation-in-argentina-leads-straight-to-our-dinner-plates
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