El Salvador Farmers Successfully Defy Monsanto
Monday, 23 March 2015 00:00 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout

Farmers in El Salvador are acutely aware of the importance of producing their own seeds, and avoiding those from the bioengineering giant. The farmers, who have already been consistently outperforming Monsanto with their seed, as the local seed is far healthier and more productive, have just managed to bring about a giant defeat of Monsanto by preventing it from supplying El Salvador with its seeds. Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture released a new round of contracts to provide seed to subsistence farmers across the country.

"Remember that Monsanto is together with DuPont, Pioneer, all the large businesses that control the world's seed market," said Juan Luna Vides, the director of diversified production for the Mangrove Association, a nongovernmental organization that was created to support a grassroots social movement for environmental conservation in El Salvador. "Unfortunately, many of the governments in Latin America, or perhaps the world, have beneficiary relationships with these companies."

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Martinez was very clear about why any dealings with Monsanto would be harmful for El Salvador.

"At the global level, Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta have control of 67 percent of the seed and agrochemical market. Monsanto controls 23 percent of the corn market and 80 percent of the world's GMO market," she said. "What Monsanto wants is to take more market share ... in order to increase their profits. Monsanto wants to increase the use of their seed in the country, not to benefit the small-scale producers. If you control the seed, you control the whole production process."

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29670-el-salvador-farmers-successfully-defy-monsanto