PNG Argentina monocropping

Final Document of the Iguazú Counter Conference

on the Impacts of Soya and Monocultures

ITEPA (Technological and Educational Institute for Agrarian Reform)

San Miguel de Iguazú, Brazil, 16 to 18 March 2005.

We resolve:

To struggle and mobilise, jointly with other movements and organisations, against the present model of development, agro exports and the proliferation of transgenic crops, which tragically affect the peoples of South America, which attack the environment and peasant societies through monocultures.

To denounce the false concept of sustainable soya mono crops, officially promoted at the First Round Table Conference on Sustainable Soy, held at Foz do Iguazú, in the interests of the North and of the agribusinesses, with the scandalous support of some large national and international NGOs.

We assert that, sustainability and monoculture are fundamentally irreconcilable, as are the interests of peasant societies and agribusiness.

To denounce the relationship between agro businesses and hydro businesses, that entrenches the privatisation of water supplies and destroying the aquifers of Latin America.

To defend water and a universal right and a common good, in opposition to the logic of transitional corporations, who view it as a mere commodity.

To accuse the agribusinesses as responsible for the mercantilisation of life and of land;

To denounce the governments for a failure to pursue policies of agrarian reform;

To defend the cultures, territories and traditional economies of indigenous peoples and peasants, while building unity with urban movements.

Encourage and disseminate the agro ecological experience of peasant societies, not merely as alternative modes of cultivation, production and consumption, but as a radical, alternative vision of life and the world, transforming the relationship between nature and human beings.

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Note from the translator

Among the signataries

VIA CAMPESINA BRASIL, PARAGUAY Y ARGENTINA

GRUPO DE REFLEXION RURAL - ARGENTINA

COORDINADORA ANTITRANSGENICOS DEL URUGUAY

More signatures to follow in the next few days when we confirm the list of participants to the meeting

contact stella.semino@mail.dk