Food and Water Europe, the European program of Food and Water Watch (FWW) just released a report last month, The Perils of the Global Soy Trade, which skillfully connects the dots between the expansion of U.S. style factory meat farms in Europe and the devastating and rapid growth of soy cultivation in South America. Authors cite the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture as the primary facilitator of this rise in cheap unsustainable soy cultivation in South America fueling the production of industrial meat in Europe. Since the WTO’s free trade regulations went into effect net soy imports to the European Union have risen by 57.1%. Four fifths of those soy-meal imports came from Brazil and Argentina who have together cleared 44.5 million acres of forest to make room for soy. But it isn’t just the forests that are being destroyed by soy.

Control over the food supply chain has concentrated into the hands of a few very powerful corporations, and the environment, consumers, rural communities and workers are paying for it. The prevalence of fattier and cheaper grain fed meat has changed Europeans as well, just as it has in the U.S. The obesity rate in the U.K. more than tripled between 1980 and 2007, and France’s nearly doubled between 1990 and 2006. Almost half of Germany’s population was obese or overweight in 2005.

At its Latin American origin, large-scale soy cultivation is also causing serious environmental and health problems. According to FWW, by 2008 99% of Argentina’s soy fields were planted with transgenic seeds which require regular doses of herbicides. Since 1996 use of transgenic seeds has tripled, but the use of glyphosate (sold by Monsanto as Roundup) to combat weeds on GM soy plantations has surged fourteen-fold to 200 million liters. Because of the excessive use of herbicides, soy-growing communities are seeing spikes in local cancer rates, and contaminated water supplies.

This recently released report also sheds some light on the ruinous effects of the current system of industrial soy/meat production on the lives of those who work the fields and tend to the animals in what authors are calling the “soy industrial complex”.

European pig and poultry farmers find themselves in one of the region’s most concentrated agricultural sectors. The bulk of earnings go to the large industrial farms, while small family owned operations barely make ends meet – 11 percent don’t. American meat producers are also getting in on the windfall profits of the “soy industrial complex.” Corporate giants like Smithfield have set up shop in Eastern Europe to take advantage of low labor costs and weaker environmental regulations. The American factory farm model that is cropping up in Europe feeds global corporate control and runs on exploitation of the environment and wage-workers. Cheap soy imports from Latin America are greasing the wheels as this system rolls across the Atlantic.

The explosion of soy production in the last 10 years is pushing small-holder farmers off of their land as large-scale soy takes over. Heavy mechanization reduces the number of jobs, increasing unemployment and rural to urban migration. Argentina’s national ranching icon, the Gaucho is facing unemployment as even the country’s pride and joy – it’s grass-fed beef – is being boxed out by soy. Currently 50¹-80%² of Argentine beef is raised in feed-lots on a diet of grain, hormones and antibiotics. Carlos Vicente of GRAIN’s Latin America program claims that the rise of feed-lot raised beef is a direct result of Argentina’s “soyization.”

Because of this dramatic shift away from food for humans, food insecurity in soy producing regions is on the rise. Between 1996 and 2003 the number of people in Argentina unable to access a “basic nutrition basket” rose from 3.7 million to 8.7 million.³

Those who do have jobs in the soy industry are by no means the lucky ones. FWW states that in 2004 the Brazilian government recorded at least seven soy operations cited for 108 instances of slavery. And the following articles indicate that Argentine workers are suffering from similar injustice.

Read Food and Water Europe’s Full report: The Perils of the Global Soy Trade; Economic, Environmental and Social Impacts

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