Hey, guess what! There’s a new member in Puerto Rico’s Agriculture Hall of Fame and it’s none other than that benign, loveable agri-giant (it’s a word now, computer!)—Monsanto!
“What,” you say, “what’s Monsanto doing in Puerto Rico?”
A very good question with many answers, most of them not known. What is known is that the biotech industry is very large in Puerto Rico—we have the second largest amount of land per square mile devoted to genetically modified seed production and experimentation. Who’s number one?
Hawaii.
Astute and discerning readers of this blog—and if you’re reading this, you are by definition astute and discerning—will have noted that both Hawaii and Puerto Rico are islands, separated from the continental United States by thousands of miles of sea water. Is that just coincidence?
If you say yes, then I’d really like to tell you about this bridge I happen to own…..
As you can see from the clip below, genes from genetically modified seeds have been found in plants a thousand miles from the nearest source. There’s something, you see, that all these guys with advanced degrees in genetics and bioengineering haven’t thought about. The wind blows.
Now little Puerto Rico has several other advantages that other states don’t have. The weather, for example—you’d really have to modify severely a soybean to get it to grow in Iowa in January. But in Puerto Rico? Not a problem—you can get four crops a year.
There’s also the fact that we, as citizens, are not as activist as the good folk of Wisconsin or Iowa. Most of my students had tuned out the news, and why not? Six more murders, eight more corruption schemes, inane stories about celebrities—who needs it? Just dealing with the morning tapón (the traffic jam), soothing / ignoring the crying baby, dropping off the kids, doing the next leg of the tapón, and trying to sneak by your boss so he / she doesn’t know you’ve drifted in late was enough to exhaust most of my students—and it was just 8AM. Life is hard on the island—nobody has much time for standing around in demonstrations, or probing into what’s going on on the island.
And then there are some nice incentives. We once had a pharmaceutical industry—you can thank Puerto Rico for all that lovely Valium you’ve enjoyed for years—but whoosh, that went away. So what’s next?
Well, we decided to make ourselves the capital for agricultural biotechnology, and we put in some nice little incentives to do it. Here’s what the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo had to say:
Transgenic seed companies operate freely and the government protects them. The whole structure to continue making Puerto Rico a transgenic paradise is based on Law 62 of 2009, better known as the Business Promotion and Development of Agricultural Biotechnology Law, driven by Luis Fortuño. It establishes "cutting edge" public policy for Puerto Rico to become a mecca for these companies, giving them fast-track permits, facilitating the acquisition of buildings and providing financial incentives through the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company and the Department of Agriculture.
Well, there is a little problem. First of all, the constitution of Puerto Rico specifically states that no company can own more than 500 cuerdas (about an acre) of land. It was a measure designed to protect local farmers from giant agricultural interests—remember King Sugar? But Monsanto has 1500 cuerdas, 500 of them from the government itself. So how does Monsanto do it? The old trick—set up a subsidiary company.
OK—what’s the land being used for? Some of it is crops, and the government pays the agribusinesses a buck or two for every hour paid for field laborers. But most of it is lying vacant—its only use is to isolate the fields from contamination. And all of the land, apparently, is surrounded by tall chain link fence, with coiled barbed wire at the top. If you stop and take a picture, a cop appears from nowhere and tells you that’s prohibited.
Yeah? Even if it’s land owned by the government of Puerto Rico?
There might be another problem as well—Puerto Rico produces almost none of its food. In fact, less than 10% of the food consumed on the island is actually grown on the island. In terms of food security, we’re in terrible shape. Oh, and agriculture represents only 1% of our gross domestic product.
So here, under the tropical sun, we have another set of contradictions, paradoxes, absurdities that only García Márquez could dream up. We are luring multinationals to come down, scoop up vast parcels of land which will go unused to produce a series of crops that will not benefit us (most of the experiments, by the way, are for corn—not frequently thought a tropical crop) and that may in fact harm us. Oh, and we don’t have the land in the first place, and every time the price of oil goes up, the California head lettuce in the grocery store jumps 20 cents.
And you know, it’s not the first time. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, when there was still a lot of chemical / pharmaceutical production on the island, parents began noticing something a bit strange. Girls as young as 2 were growing breasts. So what was causing it?
It’s been studied; it’s still not clear. Here’s what a study cited in a report by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice had to say:
“Premature breast development (thelarche) is the growth of mammary tissue in girls younger than 8 years of age without other manifestations of puberty. Puerto Rico has the highest known incidence of premature thelarche ever reported. In the last two decades since this serious public health anomaly has been observed, no explanation for this phenomenon has been found. Some organic pollutants, including pesticides and some plasticizers, can disrupt normal sexual development in wildlife, and many of these have been widely used in Puerto Rico… The phthalates that we identified have been classified as endocrine disruptors. This study suggests a possible association between plasticizers with known estrogenic and antiandrogenic activity and the cause of premature breast development in a human female population.”
My question—are we going to wait until we develop weird cancers or start frothing at the mouth before we start studies that will return answers of varying validity? Fifty countries, according to our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy right there in Madison, Wisconsin, required labeling on foods with GMO ingredient. The European Union has banned the stuff. And here’s what Carmelo Ruiz Marrero of the Puerto Rico Project on Biosafety had to say:
And 2008 saw the release of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development report (IAASTD), a unique, unprecedented and definitive report on the state of world agriculture. It was authored by over 400 international experts, subjected to two independent peer reviews, and was the product of an inclusive and participatory process in which industry, governments and civil society participated as equal partners, with the support of UN agencies and the World Bank.
The report concluded, in a nutshell, that the model of industrial, corporate, globalized agriculture cannot continue, as it is unsustainable and is literally eating up the planet’s patrimony, and favors in its stead small-scale agroecological production that uses local resources and minimizes the use of fossil fuel-based inputs- precisely what environmentalists and organic farmers had been advocating for decades.
Puerto Rico has one of the most highly paid legislatures in the country, with advisors making colossal sums of money. How could such a bad, such a cynically evil situation occur? A kickback here and there—sure, we’ve learned to expect that. But putting a whole island’s health at risk? Why would you do that?
Open up your wallet and see….
