Social Mobilization, Global Capitalism and Struggles over Food by Renata Motta

Author:Renata Motta [Motta, Renata]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317053743
Google: WSIRDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-28T05:09:08+00:00

The topic of GM crops arose already under the frame of farmers’ rights over seeds and the master frame of food sovereignty, and entered the agenda of Terra de Direitos in a bottom-up process, out of tangible problems faced by farmers and peasants. Terra de Direitos combined such grass-roots contacts with their insertion into transnational advocacy networks for human rights. They not only strengthened the front of legal mobilization in GM-Free Brazil but also brought additional repertoires of action while targeting foreign and transnational audiences.

The joining of organizations working in the countryside such as Esplar, AS-PTA and Terra de Direitos incorporated themes such as agroecology and family farming into GM-Free Brazil. The multiple sectors involved in the campaign provided the basis for a dialogue between the urban campaign targeting the market and focusing on consumer rights and agrarian frames related to agroecology and farmers’ rights in the process of constructing a critical interpretation of GM crops. An often mentioned outcome of the first years of the campaign was the alliance with the PT, which exercised a consistent oppositional role in national politics. During the electoral period, GM-Free Brazil managed to include in the programmatic statements of presidential candidate Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) a moratorium on GMOs until there were conclusive studies on the risks.

The pro-GMO coalition

The social mobilization against GMOs provoked reactions from opponents and authorities. Although resistance found allies in subnational governments, the federal government was highly engaged in promoting the technology. Actors interested in the approval of GM crops in Brazil strengthened their coordination activities, also forming a coalition, characterized, though, by different strategies. These aimed at increasing their material power over plant research, the seed market and agrarian production; their institutional power by strengthening the coordination among all interested parties in the government and in the private sector; and their discursive power by investing in public relations and media, and by establishing censorship of dissidence. In short, there was a project of bio-hegemony.

Activists recall that Monsanto, in collaboration with state institutions, pursued a strategy of controlling the seed market in Rio Grande do Sul. In fact, the GM seeds not only came from Argentina but were also produced in Brazil, which was a result of a contract between Monsanto and Embrapa signed in 1998 (interview with AS-PTA, 2012). Embrapa would contribute with its bank of seeds, having accumulated varieties suited to the different climates and soils of Brazil, and Monsanto would provide its patented genetic modification, the insertion of the gene RR. Embrapa spoke openly about the agreement and defended biotechnology at any opportunity (Murakawa 1999). Moreover, it issued an internal memorandum prohibiting its employees to publicize their contrary views on biotechnology and adding a document with the official position of the body defending GM crops (Rippardo and Murakawa 2000).

Embrapa did not invest in seed multiplication of non-GM soy adapted to the Rio Grande do Sul, a problem still faced by farmers in that state. This added to the reasons why more farmers adopted GM

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