A model has been transformed into State policy in line with business interests and is one of the factors behind the climate crisis. The other model is based on agroecology and the culture of Good Living, and is promoted by small producers, social movements and conscious consumers. Is not coexistence a false proposal?
Agribusiness and Food Sovereignty cannot coexist. This is unfeasible and impossible to sustain. Why? Because they are two opposing models in essence.
The agribusiness model is based on the burning of ecosystems and deforestation to “grow” commodities or raise animals industrially. Last year, more than 30,000 hectares were burned in northern Cordoba alone. If we expand the entire map, we will see that we have lost, in the hands of this ecocidal model, and in 2020 alone, around 350,000 hectares of native forest and swamp ecosystems. Due to these intentional fires, more than 1 million hectares have been affected across the country from 2020 to today.
Agribusiness is a state policy, that is, promoted by a national government that supports a business state. Provincial governments, companies and technoscience are also at the service of capital. A model that burns to dismantle, because it needs more land to expand its business, and pollutes to make money, impoverishing territories, cultures and ecosystems along the way. The agribusiness model is one of the main causes of the climate crisis and accelerates the point of no return.
What is the Food Sovereignty model?
It is based on agroecology and natural and ancestral agriculture. It is a policy implemented by the community, that is, promoted by agroecological producers and consumers, socio-environmental movements and peasant and indigenous agriculture. Sow to feed, take care of the land to be able to inhabit it and sustain or recover memories and cultures for Good Living. It also balances the climate and can mitigate some of the consequences of the climate crisis.
These two models are opposites and their coexistence is unfeasible and impossible, although the coexistence between the two is the false proposal presented by the national government, businessmen like Gustavo Grobocopatel and officials like Fernando “Chino” Navarro. The government ignores agroecology at both international meetings and world food summits and promotes new laws to encourage and facilitate more monocultures, GMOs and agrochemicals.
The Grobocopateles and Navarros wash the face of agribusiness. They talk about inclusion, export agroecology —to co-opt the concept and take it to business— and donate contaminated transgenic soy to cafeterias and schools, playing the game of power and those who pawn our future. While everyone gets their share of the agribusiness pie, communities get sick and children continue to suffer from high rates of malnutrition and malnutrition.
So no, you cannot coexist. To advance agroecology, agribusiness must be pushed back. It is not possible to build if they are going to burn us and poison everything. If the ecocidal model continues to advance, they could destroy all the proposals that communities have been developing and which, moreover, are the ones that really promise a scenario in which future generations have access to land, food and water.
It is discount time and we have to choose which model we will feed, support and legitimize. There can’t be half-measures because in the middle, and while we’re waiting for the buoy, everything is set on fire.
Yanina Gambetti
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