Grupo DAP soy field Just before an international conference will decide on setting 'responsible soy standards, a new report is published by Corporate Europe Observatory exposing the reality of 'responsible' soy production in Paraguay. The Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), an NGO-industry forum, will vote on a set of criteria for 'responsible' soy production on May 28 in the city Campinas, Brazil.

There is widespread international rejection of the RTRS process for certifying GM RoundupReady soy as 'responsible' while also legitimising soy expansion. The RTRS is dominated by industry members, including Monsanto, Cargill and Syngenta, while WWF and Solidaridad are the driving NGO members.

The report can be found on: http://www.corporateeurope.org/agrofuels/content/2009/05/responsible-soy...

WWF Action On May 19th, the head office of WWF-Netherlands received some extraordinary visitors, including a weeping panda, a Monsanto circus director, and various people in white overalls spraying "Roundup".

The action is a protest on the occasion of the upcoming vote of the Round Table on Responsibe Soy (RTRS), on 28 May in Campinas (Brazil). This forum will allow GM RoundupReady soy to be certified as 'responsible', while in reality, this soy is responsible for massive use of pesticides as well as deforestation and driving small farmers from their lands.

See two action clips below

Over sixty organizations from across the world have signed an open letter to the participants of the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) [1] calling for it to be abandoned. They are taking this action because criteria to be launched by the Round Table in late May 2009 encourage soy monocultures, seek to include GM soy as sustainable and are too weak to protect vital ecosystems such as Amazon, Cerrado, and Chaco.

Signatories of the letter include Friends of the Earth International, FIAN International, Global Forest Coalition, the Scottish Green Party, Soya Alliance, the Soil Association, and Via Campesina European Coordination, as well as GM Freeze and GMWatch.

Organisations can sign the open letter by sending a message (with name, organisation, place) to Claire Robinson, GM Watch, clairejr@sky.com . Individuals can still also sign the petition on www.toxicsoy.org.

.Farmers' and peasants' organisations, landless workers, rural women and youth are mobilising on April 17th for the International Day of Peasant's Struggle. This year, up to 100 actions including demonstrations, street theater, video screenings, direct action, conferences, art shows, local food markets, publications and exchanges... are being organised by the international farmers' movement Via Campesina, its friends and allies.

AsambleaMore that one hundred representatives of native and peasant communities affected by agrotoxins, as well as civil society organizations are meeting in Asuncion this week.

Thursday 16 of April at 9 o’clock , the first Assembly Against Agrotoxin Contamination, “Towards a Coordinadora of Agrotoxin Victims,” got started in the offices of the Central Nacional de Trabajadores, Asuncion, Paraguay.

On April 18th, international day of farmers struggle the assembly marched through Asuncion. View more

.Coming May, the RTRS (Round Table on 'Responsible' Soy) intends to decide on a set of criteria for certified 'responsible' soy. From the beginning, it has been a deeply criticised and flawed project. GM toxic soy will be labeled as 'responsible', greenwashing the soy industry and confusing people. Complicit are NGOs like WWF and Solidaridad. A public campaign has started to demand these organisations to step down from the RTRS process. In Dutch you can sign the petition on www.gifsoja.nl. The international site is now online: www.toxicsoy.org .

Salta, a province in the North-West of Argentina, covering part of the Chaco plain, the Yunga rainforest and the Andes mountains, has traditionally been firmly under the grip of agribusiness. In this region, home to many of Argentina’s surving indigenous communities that still depend on these ecosystems, traditional monocultures included cotton and sugar cane, dominated by dictatorship related families.

However, deforestation has accelerated even further with the introduction of Monsanto’s RoundupReady soy from 1996, that according to the provincial parliament already covers 50% of the cultivated area. A new wave of destruction is now being staged by local politicians and international agribusiness alike.

Please write now to the Supreme Court of Argentina to stop deforestation in Salta

Salta,13-2-09

In the face of serious events over the last few days, following the rise of the river Tartagel which caused severe damage and is now public knowledge, The Salteno Forum for Land wants to make public the following considerations:

Declaration of Via Campesina Argentina

Following the burning down of a police post in Tacuatí, San Pedro, Paraguay, on 31st December, a large military and police force was sent to the region. This has led to great fear among the population, a number of small farmers killed, shot at, or abused in several forms. Below you find two video´s containing testimonies of victims of crimes committed by the army and police forces now stationed in San Pedro.

Police protection for INDERT officials, 21-01-0921 January 2009 - Colonia San Juan, Puente Kyjha, Canindeyu

Close to the border with Brazil, in the province of Canindeyu, it is ‘sojalandia a full’, or let’s say one of the heartlands of soy devastation. This complete transformation to an industrial agriculture zone has occurred in a time span of only about 10 years.

As in many other places in Paraguay, the regional land reform institution (INDERT) was until recently thoroughly corrupt. Many plots of land were first assigned to landless families, but later these same plots were resold to Brazilian soy farmers. This was also the case in the Colonia San Juan, near the town of Puente Kyjha. In this community, 8000 hectares of land were assigned to landless families, but after 6 months they were violently evicted as the land was resold to latifundistas.