'Can't be called water': Brazil marks two months since dam disaster

Yahoo – AFP, March 23, 2019

Researchers collect dead fish from a retention membrane installed at the
Paraopeba River, Brazil, to try to retain mud, after the collapse of a dam (AFP Photo/
DOUGLAS MAGNO)

Juatuba (Brazil) (AFP) - Brazilian fisherman Jose Geraldo dos Santos uses a long pole to push his boat down the reddish-brown Paraopeba River, taking care not to splash himself with water he says is toxic.

Two months after an upstream tailings dam owned by mining giant Vale burst, spewing millions of tons of minerals-laced sludge across the countryside, the 67-year-old says the river is too polluted for fishing or even for his animals to drink.

So contaminated is the tributary to the Sao Francisco River -- the second longest in Brazil -- says dos Santos, that he has been advised to not even "step in the mud."

"The researchers who came here said it will take eight to 10 years (for the river to recover)," says dos Santos, who lives about 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the village of Brumadinho in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, which was engulfed by the waste unleashed by the January 25 dam rupture.

Emergency crews continue the slow process of picking through the mud looking for bodies -- at least 210 people were killed and 96 are missing.

In the meantime, Vale, government agencies and environmental groups are still assessing the impact of one of Brazil's worst industrial disasters on water quality downstream.

Researchers collect dead fish from a retention membrane installed at the Paraopeba 

River, Brazil, to try to retain mud, after the collapse of a dam (AFP Photo/DOUGLAS 

MAGNO)

Some of the findings differ dramatically.

"It's so dense and thick that it cannot be called water," says Malu Ribeiro of SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation in a video released by the non-government organization to highlight the damage to the Paraopeba.

Before the dam collapsed the water was "crystal clear, full of fish," says Ribeiro.

"I've never seen that color."

'Serious pollutants'

The disaster was the second involving Vale in three years in the mineral-rich region. The company has tried to contain the contamination by installing barriers to stop poisonous material reaching the Sao Francisco, hundreds of kilometers downstream.

So far, Vale says, its water quality analysis shows toxicity levels near the dam are "below the legal limits for mining tailings" and are "not harmful to health."

And its technicians predict that sludge from the dam would "not reach the Sao Francisco," Vale said in a statement Friday.

But SOS Mata Atlantica's latest data show high levels of toxic waste are already present in the key waterway and that the source is the dam at Brumadinho.

Various samples taken from the upper reaches earlier this month show concentrations of copper, iron, manganese and chromium that exceed the maximum limits allowed by Brazilian law.

So contaminated is the tributary to the Sao Francisco River says fisherman Jose 

Geraldo dos Santos, that he has been advised to not even "step in the mud" (AFP Photo/

DOUGLAS MAGNO)

"These are serious pollutants," says Romilda Roncatti of SOS Mata Atlantica.

But Brazilian authorities say the tailings have not spread more than one kilometer downstream and blames the increased turbidity on heavy rain.

"It's normal at this time of year to find high levels of some elements like iron or manganese -- these two elements always have higher concentrations during floods," says Eduardo Viglio of the Geological Survey of Brazil, which is tasked with collecting data on minerals and water resources in the country.

The government agency's own testing shows oxygen and acidity readings are also "normal," he adds.

That is cold comfort for dos Santos, who says increased pollution in the Paraopeba has deprived him of an income from fishing.

"The people who handle water treatment have said we can't use the water," he says.

"This place is no use to me."

Related Article:

Brazilian ndigenous community threatened in aftermath of dam burst

Brazilian indigenous community threatened in aftermath of dam burst

Yahoo – AFP, Rosa SULLEIRO, February 1, 2019

An indigenous woman of the Pataxo Ha-ha-hae community crying as she looks out
over the Paraopeba river, filled with mud after a disastrous dam collapse in Brazil's
Minas Gerais state (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

São Joaquim de Bicas (Brazil) (AFP) - In her 88 years, Antonia Alves has seen much hardship as a member of Brazil's indigenous community, whose people have often been driven from their ancestral lands over conflicts with farmers and loggers.

Until a few days ago, she had never seen an entire river die right before her eyes.

This is the unthinkable ecological nightmare her people are facing, however, after a dam storing mining waste collapsed in Minas Gerais state in southeast Brazil, engulfing the village of Brumadinho, where 110 people have been confirmed dead.

Another 238 unfortunates are still missing, hopes of their recovery all but gone in the toxic wave of sludge that engulfed them, suffocating everything in its path to the Paraopeba river.

The brown waters, which reek of dead fish, reached as far as Nao Xoha, a village sheltered by the Atlantic rainforest 14 miles (22 kilometers) from the burst dam.

Alves and her small branch of the Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae indigenous people settled in the forest a year and a half ago, relocating from their strife-torn ancestral lands in the north to live in nature according to their customs.

"It is very sad because we lived off the river," said Alves, her face lined by age and sun, head crowned with a band of white and purple feathers.

A member of the Pataxo Ha-ha-hae community carrying a cooking pan along a
path through the forest (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

"We bathed there, took our water from it, washed our clothes there and fished from it. Indians live from fishing and hunting."

Alves' neighbor Jocelia Josi describes the stench as she pulled dead fish from what formerly an important tributary of the Sao Francisco, the longest entirely-Brazilian river.

'Village of resistance'

"Now we don't have any more food from there," said the 46-year-old, who is waiting for her daughter and three-month-old grandson to return from the state capital Belo Horizonte, where they were evacuated after the disaster.

It is lunchtime in Nao Xoha -- which means "warrior spirit" in the community's native tongue -- and Alves and her husband Gervasio, a serene elder of 93, are waiting for their daughter to finish cooking outside their modest hut.

But today is no normal day. Nothing has been normal here since Dam Number 1, owned by mining giant Vale, burst last Friday, dramatically changing the lives of the 27 families living in the village.

Nao Xoha lacks its own medic, but a doctor has checked up on the 15 people who were not evacuated, and volunteers have brought supplies to the community, which always lacked electricity and now has no water.

Hayo Pataxo ha-ha-hae, the 29-year-old leader of the indigenous community, 

looks at the Paraopeba river, filled with toxic mud from the Brumadinho dam

collapse, where his community used to catch fish to eat (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

To reach the village, visitors have to cross a railway line where cargo trains pass and then enter the verdant Atlantic rainforest.

The dam breach unleashed a torrent of almost 13 million cubic tons of mud that swept across the countryside before reaching the river.

But its impact spreads even further than the vast scar of mud that rescue services are probing for the bodies of the missing.

The government of Minas Gerais has warned that the metal-tainted waters present a health risk and organizations like the WWF have said the environmental impact will be felt for years to come.

"They have taken away part of our reserve, killed a part of it, but we are a village of resistance and we will get over this," said community leader Hayo Pataxo Ha-ha-hae, who sported a head dress made of palm fronds.

"We will carry on even if the river has died. Nature depends on us to preserve it."

'Lack of respect'

He had just attended another meeting with FUNAI -- the Brazilian government body responsible for indigenous peoples' interests -- and said it was too early to determine what action the community would take against Vale.

He simply insisted that his people would resist, and defend their traditional lifestyle, just as they have for centuries.

A dead fish in the waters of the Paraopeba river, near the town of Brumadinho where 

a dam full of mining waste collapsed on January 25 (AFP Photo/Mauro Pimentel)

"It shows a lack of respect towards us", said Tahh'a, a well-built watchman aged 55, his frown wrinkling the black paint on his face.

"The biggest loss for us is the fish, because we are not permitted to hunt around here," he said, holding a pointed stick in his hand, a machete dangling from his hip.

While the full extent of the environmental impact remains unclear, the precedents are not encouraging.

No one here can forget the destruction of the Rio Doce river, also in Minas Gerais, which was devastated by the collapse in 2015 of the Mariana dam, the biggest environmental disaster in Brazilian history. That barrier was also jointly owned by Vale.

"I want to tell not only Vale, but also our leaders, to punish those guilty of doing this to our indigenous nation, together with the farmers and the families who lost people," said 29-year Hayo.

"How many more people have to be killed before the justice department takes notice?" he demanded.

"It is very sad," added Alves. "When are they going to clean up the river? When will there be fish in it again?"

Related Article:

UN shines spotlight on dying indigenous languages

Brazil mine disaster company settles for $6.2 billion

Yahoo – AFP, Eugenia Logiuratto, 3 March 2016

A fireman rescues a dog that was trapped in the mud that swept through Bento 

Rodrigues, in Minas Gerais, Brazil on November 9, 2015 (AFP Photo/Douglas Magno)

Brasília (AFP) - The owners of an iron ore mine in Brazil where a burst dam spewed a toxic flood, flattening a village and killing 19 people, settled with the government Wednesday for $6.2 billion.

Representatives of Samarco -- co-owned by Brazil's Vale iron ore giant and the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company -- signed the accord in the capital Brasilia.

President Dilma Rousseff said the settlement would help heal "a tragedy without precedent."

The funds, which will go toward social and environmental damages, will be paid out over 15 years.

BHP Billiton's chief commercial officer Dean Dalla Valle (L) attends the signing

 of the agreement between Brazil's federal government, the states of Minas Gerais

 and Espirito Santo, and mining company Samarco in Brasilia on March 2, 2016

(AFP Photo/Evaristo Sa)

Twenty billion reais ($5.1 billion) is earmarked for damages and an extra 4.4 billion reais ($1.1 billion) is specifically allocated for investments aimed at providing compensation for irredeemable losses.

Rousseff underlined that the heavy financial costs for Samarco might not end there.

"There will be complete restoration of socio-economic conditions and of the affected environment. And I want to emphasize: There will be no financial limits until there is full reparation," she said.

"We want to build a new life on the ruins."

Destruction and 'homicide'

The November 5 accident near Mariana in Minas Gerais state began when a tailings dam at Samarco's mine failed, unleashing the flood of polluted water and mud into the River Doce, one of the most important in Brazil.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff attends the signing of the agreement between 

the federal government, the states of Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo (Southeast 

Brazil) and mining company Samarco, at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, on 

March 2, 2016 (AFP Photo/Evaristo Sa)

A village was destroyed, drinking water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people were interrupted and damage reached as far as the river's mouth on the Atlantic coast, with wildlife, tourism businesses and fishing communities all suffering.

Seventeen people were confirmed killed and two are missing, presumed dead.

BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie called the agreement an important step toward recovery and said his company was making a "commitment to repairing the damage caused and to contributing to a lasting improvement in the Rio Doce."

Paulo Hartung, governor of Espirito Santo state, which also straddles the River Doce, said the toxic flood marked "the biggest environmental disaster in the history of Brazil."

Last month, police announced homicide charges against six Samarco executives, including the CEO at the time of the accident, and an engineer.

A general view on November 6, 2015 of the village of Bento Rodrigues, in Mariana,

Brazil where a dam burst at a mining waste site (AFP Photo/Douglas Magno)

Samarco and its powerful owners could still face further legal difficulties, despite Wednesday's deal.

Last week, a federal prosecutor said that he would challenge the settlement, arguing that not enough care was taken in assessing the true costs of the disaster.

"How can you define an amount if there are no criteria for evaluating the damage?" Jose Adercio Leite Sampaio said. "Where did they get this number? For us, it's a magic number... It could be 23 or 24, 30, 40 billion."

Vale reported last week that it lost $12.3 billion last year due to lower prices for iron ore, the sharp depreciation of the real, and the deadly accident at the Samarco mine. The 2015 loss followed a 2014 profit of $657 million.

Brazil to sue dam spill mining companies for $5.2 bn

Yahoo - AFP, Damian Wroclavsky with Laura Binilla in Rio de Janeiro

Brazil's government says it will sue mining giants BHP Billiton and Vale for $5.2

 billion in clean-up costs and damages after the deadly collapse of a waste water

dam at an iron-ore mine (AFP Photo/Fred Loureido)

Brasília (AFP) - Brazil's government said Friday it will sue mining giants BHP Billiton and Vale for $5.2 billion in clean-up costs and damages after the deadly collapse of a waste water dam at an iron-ore mine.

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said a lawsuit would be filed demanding that the companies and mine operator Samarco, which they co-own, create a fund of 20 billion reais. The money would go to environmental recovery and compensation for victims.

"There was a huge impact from an environmental point of view," Teixeira said at a press conference in the capital Brasilia.

"It is not a natural disaster, it is a disaster prompted by economic activity, but of a magnitude equivalent to those disasters created by forces of nature."

The suit will be filed on Monday, Attorney General Luis Inacio Adams said.

At least 13 people died and some 11 remain missing from the flood of mud and waste water triggered by the breaking dam at the Samarco iron ore mine near Mariana in southeastern Brazil on November 5.

The deluge swept down the River Doce to the Atlantic, sparking claims of major contamination, although the mining companies insist there is no serious pollution.

The fund being demanded by the government would dwarf initial estimates by Deutsche Bank that a clean-up could cost about $1 billion.

Adams said that the companies would be asked to pay the amount out gradually, as a percentage of their profits.

"The measure should guarantee long-term financing for actions to revitalize the (river) basin," Adams' office said in a statement.

Cooperation or denial?

Adams said he hoped the powerful corporations -- BHP Billiton is the world's biggest miner and Vale is the world's biggest iron ore specialist -- would cooperate with the government. Both have said they want to meet their obligations.

"The scale of the damage is very big but the companies have announced measures that show they are interested in repairing their image," Adams said.

Teixeira described the environmental impact as devastating and difficult to repair.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will attend the UN Climate Conference

 - COP21 - in Paris, where host of the summit, French Foreign Minister Laurent 

Fabius, has said he was counting on Brazil to help seal a global pact (AFP 

Photo/Evaristo Sa)

"What was lost there is lost. The biological chain that was broken will not be put back together in any way as it was before. We have to create conditions so that nature establishes new ecological conditions," she said.

Earlier Friday in Rio de Janeiro, Vale announced a compensation fund, but did not give figures. Executives also sounded a defiant note, rejecting allegations that the River Doce has been badly polluted.

Vania Somaville, director of human resources, health and safety at Vale, told a press conference that lead, arsenic, nickel and chrome had been detected at some points along the river.

However, Somaville argued that the potentially dangerous contaminants were not carried there by the waste water from the mine.

"They were (already) there at the edges or in the bed of the river" and were disturbed in the flood, she said.

"The good news is that these materials did not dissolve in the water" and are now diminishing, she said.

This was in stark contrast to a report by two UN experts on Wednesday accusing the corporations and the Brazilian government of failing to respond to a toxic disaster.

The UN's special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox, said the equivalent of "20,000 Olympic swimming pools of toxic mud" spewed into the River Doce.

CEO on the defensive

Vale's CEO, Murilo Ferreira, has been criticized by environmental activists for what many saw as his slow response to the disaster and his attempt to distance himself from the tragedy by saying that Vale was only a shareholder in Samarco.

He told journalists Friday in a breaking voice that "the disaster has been extremely painful" for him and other executives.

"My soul is saddened and disturbed... We are very worried that there are 5,200 people who don't know what the future holds," he said, referring to the many jobs suspended in and around Samarco after the accident.

However, Ferreira once more sought to draw a distinction between Vale and the Samarco operation, saying that help was being offered only out of "solidarity."

"In four years I was never at the Samarco offices in Mariana," he said. Until the accident "I didn't know them... We don't know who their clients are or their prices."

Pearl Jam donates concert proceeds to Brazil mine victims

Yahoo – AFP, 21 Nov 2015

Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam performs during the fourth annual Global Citizen
 Festival in Central Park Manhattan on September 26, 2015 in New York
 (AFP Photo/Kena Betancur)

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - US rock group Pearl Jam donated proceeds from a concert in Brazil to victims of a toxic mining spill that killed 12 people and was the country's worst environmental disaster.

The group's singer Eddie Vedder interrupted a show Friday night in Belo Horizonte, capital of the southeast state of Minas Gerais -- where the disaster occurred November 5 -- and called for the mining company involved to be severely punished.

As seen on a video on the news website G1, the group got a standing ovation when Vedder said the take from that concert would go to victims of the disaster.

It struck when a dam collapsed at the waste reservoirs of an iron ore mine, unleashing a torrent of yellowish muck that all but buried a village, left 280,000 people without water and smothered thousands of fish, turtles and other animals.

Besides the 12 dead, another 12 people remain missing.

The mining facility is owned by Samarco, a joint venture between the mining giants BHP Billiton of Australia and Vale of Brazil.

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said Friday it was the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history and that it will take 30 years to clean the basin of the Doce River, into which the sludge flowed.

Samarco has already been hit with damages, fines and frozen funds totalling more than $400 million.

Related Article:

Australia's Barrier Reef 'risks becoming dumping ground': WWF

Bloomberg and Gates launch legal fund to help countries fight big tobacco

Philanthropists donate initial $4m towards legal advice for nations whose health measures are challenged by tobacco industry, as in Uruguay and Australia

The Guardian, Sarah Boseley Health editor, Wednesday 18 March 2015

The tobacco industry has invoked trade agreements in Uruguay against
graphic health warnings and in Australia against ‘plain’ packs.
Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

A $4m (£2.7m) fighting fund to help governments around the world in legal battles against the tobacco industry has been announced by Bloomberg Philanthropies, seeking to assist countries which are making slow progress curbing smoking.

While smoking is becoming a marginalised pastime in more affluent countries where laws on smoking in public places are in force, there is concern about the tobacco industry push-back that involves legal challenges to new measures such as plain packaging.

The fund, to which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also contributing, will give countries the technical support of legal experts to draw up legislation as well as defend court actions brought by tobacco companies. It is expected to grow as other donors join in. Australia and Uruguay are two of the countries where public health measures have been challenged by industry.

At the 16th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi, Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation, also pointed to the danger.

“In an ominous trend, in some countries the battle between tobacco and health has moved into the courts,” she said. “Governments wishing to protect their citizens through larger pictorial warnings on cigarette packs or by introducing plain packaging are being intimidated by industry’s threats of lengthy and costly litigation. This is an effort to deprive governments of their sovereign right to legislate in the public interest. We will push back hard.”

Smoking killed 10 million people in the last century and is predicted to cause 1 billion deaths this century. A global report launched at the conference found there were 3.9 billion smokers aged 15 and over in WHO member states in 2010. By 2025, that number is predicted to grow to 5 billion if the present pace of tobacco control continues. Experts say the global target – to cut smoking worldwide by 30% from 2010 levels by 2025 – will not be reached if more action is not taken. Smoking rates have fallen for both men and women in most countries, but only 37 nations are on course to meet the target.

The tobacco industry has invoked trade agreements to counter anti-smoking measures – in Uruguay against graphic health warnings on packaging and in Australia against “plain” or unremarkable standardised packs.

“We are at a critical moment in the global effort to reduce tobacco use, because the significant gains we have seen are at risk of being undermined by the tobacco industry’s use of trade agreements and litigation,” said Michael R Bloomberg. “We will stand with nations as they work to protect their populations against the deadly health effects of tobacco use.”

“Country leaders who are trying to protect their citizens from the harms of tobacco should not be deterred by threats of costly legal challenges from huge tobacco companies,” said Bill Gates. “Australia won its first case, which sends a strong message. But smaller, developing countries don’t have the same resources. That’s why we are supporting the Anti-Tobacco Trade Litigation Fund with Bloomberg Philanthropies.”

Related Article:

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it),  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“…  The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. ...”

Pesticide illness triggers anti-Monsanto protest in Argentina

Deutsche Welle, 25 October 2013

Monsanto pesticides are causing birth defects and cancer in Argentina, according to a new report. In a farming community near Córdoba, residents say they have been poisoned by pesticides used in soy fields.

Sofía Gatica sits in the sun on a café patio in the Argentine city of Córdoba. She talks about raising her three children in Ituzaingó, a Córdoba suburb surrounded by soy fields. In the mid-1990s her oldest son became extremely ill.

"When he was four years old, he came down with the illness that left him temporarily paralyzed," she recalls. "He was admitted to the hospital. They told me that they didn't know what was wrong with him."

The Gatica family lived just fifty meters from fields planted with genetically-modified soy. Planes regularly flew overhead, spraying the plants with the herbicide glyphosate. Slowly, the entire suburb started getting sick.

Argentina is the world's third-largest
soy producer

"Children were being born with deformities," Sofia says, "little babies were being born with six fingers, without a jawbone, missing a skull bone, with kidney deformities, without an anus - and a lot of mothers and fathers were developing cancer."

In 1999, Sofía Gatica gave birth to her fourth baby, a little girl. Three days later, the baby died of kidney failure. The loss of her child prompted Gatica to take action. She decided to find out what was happening in her neighborhood.

"I went door-to-door and did a survey - asking each mother for the sick person's name, address, clinic, everything. And each mother sent me to another, and to another, and so on."

Major health consequences

Soon Sofia Gatica was joined by others. "The mothers started to come help me, to tell me, 'Look, I have another sick person.' They came to me by themselves and decided to join the struggle."

The group named themselves the Mothers of Ituzaingó. They took their survey to the government and demanded an immediate investigation. In 2002, the government agreed.

The introduction of patented seeds and chemicals has transformed Argentina's
agricultural sector

The results were alarming. The area's water supply was polluted, and eighty percent of the neighborhood's children had agrotoxins in their blood.

Around this time, a doctor at the University of Buenos Aires - Andrés Carrasco - proved that the herbicide glyphosate can cause birth defects in vertebrates. "In most cases, the fetus dies before birth because of its deformities," Carrasco explain said in an interview with DW. "The inhalation or the introduction of these agrotoxins kills the embryo."

According to a new report from the Associated Press, there are similar cases being recorded across Argentina. Monsanto herbicides and pesticides are drifting into residential communities and seeping into water sources, farmers are using the chemicals without proper protective gear and discarded pesticide containers are being used to store water and other farm goods.

The report signals growing concern among doctors, who warn that these chemicals may be the cause of rising cancer rates, birth defects and respiratory illness. Cancer rates in Santa Fe are reportedly two to four times higher than the national average. In Chaco, birth defects quadrupled in the ten years after biotechnology for improving crop yields was introduced.

Pesticides for food security

In the mid-1990s, Monsanto introduced soybean seeds engineered to resist herbicide. Argentine farmers were quick to start using it in their fields, which improved productivity and eventually turned the country into the urned the country into the world's third largest soy producing nation. Despite the growing anti-pesticide and anti-GMO movements, many farmers remain convinced that Argentina’s economic stability and future food security depends on the continued use of Monsanto’s products.

César Soldano has been farming in Córdoba and the nearby province of Santiago del Estero for three decades. He plants soy and corn in the spring and summer, and wheat and garbanzo beans in the winter. The land where he now farms wasn't productive until he started using genetically-modified soy beans and the glyphosate herbicide.

"This was all scrubland," Soldano says, gesturing to his fields and adds that glyphosate enabled him to transform the landscape.

"Monsanto's 'Roundup-Ready' soy means that the soil doesn't have to be turned," Soldano continues. "The glyphosate destroys all plant growth except the soybean. This makes it possible to conserve water and grow crops."

Argentine soy is considered essential
for food supply as the global population
grows

Soldano drives around his fields, describing his irrigation system and explaining that today's green shoots will soon become garbanzo plants. Before the arrival of glyphosate, he says, farming techniques caused erosion, depleted the region's water supply, and polluted the environment with chlorine-based weedkillers, which have now been internationally banned.

"Our crops were not productive. And when this technological change came about, everything changed radically," Soldano notes. "The person who was able to alter the plant's nucleus in order to improve our food crops deserves a Nobel Prize."

Soldano points out that genetically-modified soy has also made an important impact on Argentina's economy. Almost ten percent of the national government's budget comes from taxes on soy.

Attacks on anti-pesticide campaigners

Sofía Gatica, however, doesn't believe the short-term economic benefits make the long-term damage worthwhile. Her continued protests against genetically-modified crops and the pesticides used with them has made her a target. She was harassed for two years by a woman who met her at the bus stop and insulted her for the entire forty-minute bus ride to work.

Once, Gatica says, a man appeared at her home and threatened her with a shotgun, telling her to give up the fight against soy farmers. "Then the threatening phone calls began. They told me that I had three children and that I would end up with two. And it was awful not to know if your child would come home."

But Gatica has continued to speak out against pesticides and GMO crops. And slowly, she and other activists are gaining support. "Everyone is demanding pesticide-free borders - for agrotoxins not to be sprayed near people. Some places now have 1,500-meter (4,921-feet) borders, others 2,500 meters," Gatica says.

Soy is broadly used as animal feed,
tofu and biodiesel

"And now we've got clean water in Ituzaingó, where before we didn't have potable water. And Córdoba has started a tumor registry; before there wasn't a registry of people with cancer," she says.

In a landmark case last year, a soy farmer and the pilot of a fumigation plane were found guilty of spraying harmful herbicides near residential areas, says Enrique Viale, the president of the Argentine Association of Environmentalist Lawyers. "A court in Córdoba gave a verdict that, for the first time, punished a farmer for the crime of polluting with agrotoxins," Viale says. "The verdict is the product of the struggle by citizens, by women like Sofía Gatica, by the Mothers of Ituzaingó. It's helpful and valuable as a precedent, but it's not widespread yet."

Sofía Gatica says she wants Argentina's government to strictly control the activities of soy farmers. She wants genetically-modified soy and all the associated chemicals banned - and the multinational companies that sell them to leave Argentina. "The multinationals come here to steal our land, to kick out the people who live on the land, to steal our water, and to sow death," she says.

But the world's population is growing and soy from the farmlands of Argentina is considered essential for ensuring food security for the future - making the battle between anti-GMO campaigners and soy farmers far from over.

Banners, more protests against Monsanto

STL Today, By Georgina Gustin, March 20, 2012 

Protestors gather Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, at Monsanto headquarters
in Creve Coeur. Photo by Erik M. Lunsford

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• St. Louispark hit by pro-Occupy graffiti
• Occupy protesters say arrests at park were unprovoked

Protesters who are part of a movement calling itself Occupy Monsanto hung banners throughout the region early Tuesday, a day after holding a march through downtown St. Louis and days after protests against the company were held in some 30 cities across the country.

Some of the signs read "FDA is Genetically Contaminated by Monsanto" and "Genetic Biohazard: Defend Yourself."

By mid-day Tuesday, roughly half of the 13 banners, which were hung mostly on highway overpasses, had been removed by law enforcement, according to an Occupy Monsanto organizer.

Over the weekend the Creve Couer-based biotechnology giant told employees at a research facility in Davis, Calif., that they did not need to come to work, out of concern for their safety amid protests there.

A Monsanto spokesperson said 60 people work at the facility, but did not comment further.

The movement, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, is trying to urge people to take part in a one-day international protest on September 17, the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The group is calling on federal regulators to require mandatory labeling of foods containing transgenic ingredients, and is pushing to stop approval of new crops that would be genetically engineered to withstand applications of old-generation herbicides.

The company said it respects the rights of the protesters to voice their opinions, but did not comment beyond that.

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