Rainforest Action Network Joins Brazilian and Paraguayan Groups in Denouncing Cargill’s Planned Soy Port
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 4, 2008
7:00 PM
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CONTACT: Rainforest Action Network
Sam Haswell,
Communications Director
(415) 659-0519
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Rainforest Action Network Joins Brazilian and Paraguayan Groups in Denouncing Cargill’s Planned Soy Port
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ASUNCIÓN, PARAGUAY - March 4 - Representatives from Rainforest Action Network (RAN), BASE Investigaciones Sociales (BASEIS), and Mobilization of Indigenous Peoples of the Cerrado announced at a press conference today that international opposition to Cargill’s newly approved soy port near Asunción, Paraguay, would continue despite the company’s successful bid for local permitting.
The port, which will include a soy processing facility, is to be located near a public water supply that serves more than 1 million people. Soy production, especially that of the genetically modified soy that dominates in Paraguay, relies on liberal inputs of fertilizer and pesticide, which will likely contaminate the water supply.
“Campesino communities are being displaced by soy plantations and exposed to dangerous pesticides, which are often sprayed from the air,” said Andrea Samulon, a representative with RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign. “Bringing soy processing within 500 meters of a municipal water supply is a matter of international concern.”
Samulon and another RAN staffer, Jodie Van Horn, have been touring Paraguay for the last week to investigate the role of U.S. agribusinesses in soy expansion in the region, and to document the human and environmental effects of soy expansion.
Cargill has also drawn fire for its soy port in Santarém, in the Brazilian Amazon. The port’s opening in 2003 doubled deforestation rates in the surrounding area. The port continues to operate despite a Brazilian Supreme Court ruling that Cargill must shut down the port pending a full environmental impact assessment.
Soy production in South America—particularly in the Amazon and the adjacent Cerrado—has exploded in recent years as result of increased demand for livestock feed in the developing world and decreased production in the United States as farmers have devoted more cropland to corn to produce ethanol. U.S. agribusinesses Cargill, Bunge and ADM are among the largest soy processors in South America.
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