Located in the Santa Lucia River´s Basin, the source of drinking water for the capital city and the most populated area in Uruguay, Canelones is a territory of varied production and peasant agriculture.

This is why the arrival of GM crops, especially soy resistant to glyphosate, has caused the rejection of communities of small and family farmers.

This concern dates from 2008, when an airplane sprayed glyphosate to a field and a densely populated area in Totoral del Sauce, affecting children and people who were outdoors.

This was denounced through the local media and to local and national authorities, and the sprayings stopped. However, by the end of 2008, there were plans to grow 400 hectares of GM soy near Sauce city, in Cuchilla de Rocha.

The community, among them small-scale fruit and vegetable producers, opposed this. They informed about the effects on the environment, and many of the people who had let their fields to the production of soy took a step back.

There was a strong social pressure, and finally, the plans to grow soy in that part of the department did not succeed. But it was clear that without specific national or local regulations, nothing could prevent a local or foreign company to grow GM soy.

However, this concern went beyond Cuchilla de Rocha, and the negative impacts of growing soy on human communities, land, biodiversity and water were made public.

This resulted in the creation of an Advisory Commission, made up by citizens and local authorities, to work on the issue and draft criteria and recommendations.

The Commission, then, recommended a ban to sprayings in Canelones, and they raised the need to establish a GM exclusion zone as a pilot project in the Southern region of the department. After two years of consultations, the Commission decided to submit their recommendation.

The “concern” over the potential GM exclusion zone is not related to the loss of lands for this type of crops, but to the fact that such a decision could set a precedent to be implemented in other areas of the country, where the expansion of this monoculture has caused even more serious problems.

Today, GM soy and tree monoculture plantations occupy around 1 million hectares each, which changed the landscape, the land use and especially the availability of water in some regions of the country.

A “GM exclusion zone” wouldn´t be an exception at international level: in several European countries, such as Spain, Germany and France, these zones have been implemented in response to the demands of communities.

The demands of the Canelones communities concerned over the sustainability of their lives and the lives of their families in the countryside had their first victory: the start of a debate about a central issue which is not widely covered.

Photo: 5preguntas.blogspot.com