“What’s called scientific agriculture is actually an agriculture of ignorance. It’s an agriculture of ignorance because it uses the tools of warfare — instruments of war brought to agriculture, unaware of what they will do to our health when we eat this food,” states Dr. Vandana Shiva, from India, herself a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (otherwise known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) when asked about the use of modern machinery and agrochemicals (such as pesticides).
Her words are shared by many others, such as professor Gille-Eric Seralini, a specialist in molecular biology from France, and Argentina’s Walter Pengue, an agronomist who specializes in genetics and vegetable breeding. Their testimonies, with those of other scientists and scholars, are gathered in Argentine filmmaker Ulises de la Orden’s documentary Desierto verde, which focuses on the local production of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), such as soy bean, treated with glyphosate, a herbicide used to kill weeds without killing crops (this way, yields can increase up to 300 percent).
More production, more profit, more business. Argentina is one of the world’s largest soy bean suppliers, which has fuelled spectacular economic growth. But not without a price. According to studies conducted with human cells and clinical observation, glyphosate is most likely to cause health problems when used in transgenic soy fields.
This is exactly what started to happen in Barrio Ituzaingó, in the city of Córdoba, back in 2001. First, a small number of women lost their hair and there were kids with respiratory problems. Little by little, more cases became known. A group of women started going around the neighbourhood, marking the houses with severely ill people. The scenario was devastating: out of 5,000 neighbours, 200 had cancer, a good number of young men aged 18 to 25 had brain tumors, and 13 kids had leukemia. Then came death.
As the cases multiplied, the women, under the name of Madres de Ituzaingó, organized protests and demanded an investigation, which was indeed conducted, concluding that one of the possible causes for the illnesses could be the fumigation planes flying directly over their houses, contaminating water supplies, soy fields and the air.
The Madres de Ituzaingó demanded justice and managed to put the guilty parties on trial. But nobody listened to the mothers. They were referred to as lunatics. Nonetheless, they kept speaking up, and after 10 years of struggle, an unprecedented trial was finally held, changed the course of the events forever. Desierto verde exposes the facets and ramifications of the use of transgenic soy bean in Argentina and also chronicles the events that led to the trial. It confronts the testimonies of those in favour of using GMOs (the heads of multinational companies) with those affected by them.
The film resorts to fragments from TV news shows and interviews with renowned personalities in the fields of medicine, biology and genetics. It features video excerpts from the trial, arguably the most compelling parts.
From a formal point of view, the film is well scripted, professionally shot and skillfully edited, and it’s never confusing thanks to its clear narrative.
However, it sometimes looks and feels like a TV news report. It’s not a mistake, it’s a production decision. The result is rather limited in scope. They rely too much on words, and in a very conventional manner, and they don’t provide much of a subtext or different discoursive modes.
But, considering the need for awareness and debate on the use of GMOs in Argentina and the world at large, Desierto verde is helpful and timely — perhaps this is what it intended to be.