ASUNCION, Paraguay – “In any moderately civilized country if you would spray your pesticides on people, you’d basically go to jail,” said Miguel Lovera, head of Paraguay’s agricultural enforcement agency. “In this country that wasn’t the case. It may still be the case in many places in the country that they may be spraying on the wrong places, on the wrong people, on the wrong animals – but we’re out there to put an end to this situation.”
Lovera is currently under fire for the agency’s destruction of 44 hectares of transgenic corn that were being grown illegally. Transgenic soy is currently the country’s main export, and vast swaths of the countryside have been bulldozed by foreign landowners to make way for the controversial crop, but so far soy is the only transgenic allowed for production.
Environmental and campesino leaders are trying to hold the line in protecting their native corn, and so far, the government is behind them. This podcast, which gives the background, was aired on Progressive Forum on KPFT, 90.1, in Houston, Texas.
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Interview with Paraguay’s Miguel Lovera
