International Women’s Day: anti-GM occupation & trashing, Brazil

On March 7th — Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day — dozens of Brazil­ian women occu­pied a research site of the U.S.-based agri­cul­tur­al biotech­nol­o­gy giant Mon­san­to in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, destroy­ing the green­house and exper­i­men­tal plots of genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied (GM) corn.

On March 7th — Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day — dozens of Brazil­ian women occu­pied a research site of the U.S.-based agri­cul­tur­al biotech­nol­o­gy giant Mon­san­to in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, destroy­ing the green­house and exper­i­men­tal plots of genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied (GM) corn. Par­tic­i­pants, mem­bers of the inter­na­tion­al farm­ers’ orga­ni­za­tion La Vi­a Campesina, stat­ed in a note that the act was to protest the “Brazil­ian gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion in Feb­ru­ary to legal­ize Mon­san­to’s GM Guardian® corn, which came just weeks after the French gov­ern­ment pro­hib­it­ed the corn due to envi­ron­ment and human health risks.”

La Via Campesina also held pas­sive protests in sev­er­al Brazil­ian cities against the Swiss cor­po­ra­tion Syn­gen­ta Seeds for its ongo­ing impuni­ty for the mur­der of Valmir Mota de Oliveira. Mota was a mem­ber of the Move­ment of the Land­less Rur­al Work­ers (MST) — the largest of the sev­en Brazil­ian move­ments in La Via Campesina — who was assas­si­nat­ed last Octo­ber in the state of Paran dur­ing these orga­ni­za­tions’ third occu­pa­tion of the com­pa­ny’s ille­gal exper­i­men­tal site for GM soy­beans. While Brazil already has a high num­ber of land activist mur­ders, “Mota’s was sig­nif­i­cant because it was the first to occur dur­ing an occu­pa­tion orga­nized by La Vi­a Campesina, and the first assas­si­na­tion in Brazil to occur on the prop­er­ty of a multi­na­tion­al agribusi­ness.”

The expan­sion of agri­cul­tur­al biotech­nol­o­gy into Brazil is increas­ing agrar­i­an con­flicts and exac­er­bat­ing his­toric ten­sions over land. The move­ments in La Vía Campesina reject seed patent­ing, claim­ing the prac­tice traps poor farm­ers in a cycle of debt to cor­po­ra­tions that own the seed patents, and under­mines small farm­ers’ auton­o­my to save and share seeds. They claim that “GM tech­nol­o­gy threat­ens bio­di­ver­si­ty and native seed vari­eties, and vio­lates the rights of con­sumers and small farm­ers by con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing con­ven­tion­al and organ­ic crops.”