10. Brazilian Farmers at a Crossroads: Biotech Industrialization of Agriculture or New Alternatives for Family Farmers?

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, Brazil, the world’s second largest soybean producer and exporter, has emerged as an important battlefield amid the global conflict over genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). Given the fact that the majority of soybean growers in the United States and Argentina have already adopted the associated package of new technologies, European and Asian consumers, looking for non-GMO sources, are curious as to whether or not Brazilian farmers will accept this new package, whose central components are transgenic seeds and herbicides that kill most plants, except the target crop. Until recently, growing GM crops in Brazil has been prohibited due to a judicial authority that ruled in favour of the claims made by environmental and consumers’ organizations (see Pelaez and Dalto, this volume). While the federal government, both the former Cardoso administration and the current Lula administration, has not effectively mapped out its policy either against or in favour of GMOs, the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), the southernmost state, has been implementing its “GM-free zone” policy since 1998. Two other southern states, Paraná and Santa Catarina, have also rejected GMOs. It is in Rio Grande do Sul (RS), however, where the most contentious problem has occurred: namely the smuggling of GM soybean seeds across the border with Argentina. In spite of the states’ policy banning GMO planting, many farmers, ranging from small to large scale, have grown and harvested illegal GM soybeans for years with mixed feelings: the expectation of financial benefits on the one hand, and anxiety about negative environmental and health impacts as well as about breaking the law on the other. This kind of farmers’ dilemma is our starting point. But the objective of this chapter is not to discuss GMO politics itself, which is already dealt with in other chapters