doveilmiosoldi:

utnereader:

“Rural eastern Paraguay was once flush with jungles, small farms, schools, and wildlife. Now it is a sea of soybeans. The families, trees, and birds are gone. The schools are empty. The air is filled with the toxic stench of pesticides.”

by April Howard and Benjamin Dangl, In These Times
Utne Reader July / August 2007 Issue

“Then the soy farmers arrived and we couldn’t stand the fumigation. We had terrible headaches, nausea and skin rashes, problems seeing, respiratory infections. The chickens died. The cows aborted their calves and their milk dried up.”…when farmers refused to convert or sell, thugs showed up to convince them to grow soy or leave. “If you tried to resist, they’d kill you,” Angélica Ramírez, Meriton’s daughter, says…Soy cultivation dumps more than 24 million liters of agrochemicals in Paraguay every year. They include Paraquat, which has no antidote if ingested; Metamidofos, which has reduced sperm count in exposed males; and Endosulfan, which causes birth defects in the infants of repeatedly exposed mothers.”

SO important.