Poisoned, Dispossessed and Excluded: A Critique of the Neoliberal Soy Regime in Paraguay

Abstract

This paper challenges the recent hailing of agricultural biotechnology as a panacea for food insecurity and rural poverty in countries of the global South. Based on an empirical investigation of the neoliberal soy regime in Paraguay, I document how the profound transformation of this country's agricultural mode of production over the past two decades, spurred by the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture and the biorevolution, has jeopardized rural livelihoods. In particular, I demonstrate how the transgenic soyization of Paraguay's agriculture has led to an increased concentration of landholdings, as well as the displacement and disempowerment of peasants and rural labourers who have been rendered surplus to the requirements of agribusiness capital. At the same time, the consolidation of this new agro-industrial model has fostered a growing dependence on agrochemicals that compromise environmental quality and human health. Thus, I argue, a development policy based on industrial monocropping of genetically modified (GM) soy is inappropriate, unsustainable and unethical.

The agrarian political economy of left‐wing governments in Latin America: Agribusiness, peasants, and the limits of neo‐developmentalism

“…In Paraguay, in 2000 soybean was planted on 1.2 million hectares of land. This jumped to 2.9 million hectares by 2012 and again to 3.2 million hectares in 2015 (Ezquerro‐Cañete, , p. 704). In Uruguay, the area planted with soybean was only 30,000 hectares in 2001.…”

Plantaciones forestales en Chile: ¿hacia un modelo más sustentable?

“…No obstante, el 'extractivismo agrario' ha emergido asociado los procesos de 'acaparamiento de tierras' (Borras et al, 2014) con la creciente expansión de monocultivos con propósitos de exportación, en medio de discursos de sostenibilidad que buscan legitimarlos. Casos como el de la soja en Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay y Brasil (Baletti, 2014;Ezquerro-Cañete, 2016;Gudynas, 2008;McKay, 2017;Sly, 2017) o como el de la palma en Guatemala y Colombia (Alonso-Fradejas, 2015; Marin-Burgos y Clancy, 2017) sirven como ejemplo.…”

Agribusiness, peasants, left‐wing governments, and the state in Latin America: An overview and theoretical reflections

“…Although here there are also a great variety of strategies of wealth accumulation deployed in the extractive sectors, judging by the way in which private property rights over resources and territories are granted, it appears that we are witnessing the emergence of a new capitalist form of politically constituted private property, which sometimes grants the ability to extract rent. In Brazil since 2005, Monsanto's intellectual private (IP) property right over Roundup Ready Soybean seeds allows it to charge 1% royalties on the value of the soybeans sold to processing and trading companies, while in Paraguay, the same mechanism applies but the amount is subject to yearly negotiations (Ezquerro‐Cañete, ; Filomeno, , pp. 449, 453).…”