He spoke at the launching of the national chapter of the Continental campaign against agrotoxics and for life in Ituzaingo, Cordoba by MNCI (a member of La Via Campesina) together with Grain and Friends of the Earth Argentina.

Ituzaingó is a neighborhood in Cordoba where families have been sprayed with agrotoxics, having a terrible effect on people’s health
that led to a public hearing against the responsible.

Near that city Monsanto transnational corporation is planning to install a branch in the town called Malvinas Argentinas. The moved was met by the rejection of the social movements of the area.

Aranda expressed concern over Monsato’s behavior worldwide:
“Where Monsato is there is death. Having a Monsanto branch in Cordoba means death. Its genetically modified (GM) seeds only work on agrotoxics. The people are now threatened by large extensions of GM crops. This model brings about violence, death by poisoning and through bullets”, said Paulo Aranda.

The “Continental campaign against agrotoxics and for life” is an education and mobilization campaign in order to coordinate the struggle against the current capitalist model of agriculture, based on agribusiness and the plundering of common natural goods”.

The problems related with the use of agrotoxics are no longer an exclusive issue of the countryside but they have become an environmental and public health problem in towns and cities around Latin America and the world. Agrotoxics pollute water, soil, plants, food, animals and human beings.

The Campaign against Agrotoxics and For Life has two main areas: one is to continue exposing the capitalist model of agriculture and its relation with agrotoxics, as well as its damaging effects on human beings and the planet; and the other is food sovereignty as an alternative.

Miguel Plaza, also a member of MNCI, explained this continental and international campaign promoted by an alliance of hundreds of social movements and organizations both rural and urban.

Ituzaingo neighborhood, Cordoba, set the example through the resistance of a group of mothers who sued the responsible for spraying glyphosate and endusolfan on the populations, a case that has attracted a lot of national attention and whose ruling will be issued soon.

The defendants in the case are two producers and a pilot, who are being accused of carrying out clandestine spraying in Ituzaingo, where the 2nd National Meeting of Fumigated People took place, where they agreed to develop a national campaign that will coordinate the struggles for life and for health.

A neighbor from Malvinas Argentinas closed the launching of the campaign by talking about the resistance of the community to the building of the “world’s largest silo” that will take up 32 hectares, where Monsanto will manipulate seeds without a prior environmental impact study, as demanded by the legislation in force.

Production by: Friends of the Earth Argentina