Poisoning for Profit-Daniel Faber

Central America’s Cash Crop

Cotton is the main export.

Oligarchs buy up family farms for cotton production.

Coastal areas deforested for farming

Pesticides like DDT used to eliminate disease carrying mosquitoes

Ecosystem Destruction

Guatemala: Coastal Lowlands were all rainforest before cotton.Hundreds of thousands of acres destroyed for cottonForests, habitats, and peasant villages removed for roads and fields.World Bank loans made it possible.

Cotton Elite

1960: 25,900 acres for Cotton.1977: 535,990 acres for Cotton.15 families control nearly 50% of land by 1980.Peasants could rent land under Elite’s instructionEncouraged to maximize profits, regardless of soil deterioration and poison.

Pesticide Use

Former WWII chemical weapons converted to pesticides.

Methyl Parathion: Nerve gas used in concentration camps.

Hundreds of deaths and Illnesses among farms workers and their families.

Praised by cotton growers as an ‘Atomic Bomb’ against pests.

The Pesticide Treadmill

Pests develop resistance to chemicals.Declining yields, increasing costs, falling profits.Cotton yields down 30% from 1965-1969, land used for cotton down 43%.Half of production costs spent on pesticides.Monsanto makes many.

Contamination

Falling cotton profits.

Diversification into corn, sugar, and cattle.

El Salvador, 47% of cotton land put into corn production, another 30% for cattle.

Cattle graze on land contaminated with pesticides.

Banned? Not There!

DDT, Endrin, Phosvel, to name a few.‘Phosvel Zombies’ Phosvel exported to Central America as part of foreign aid programs.40% of pesticide exports sent to Central America, most banned in the United States.

Poisoning the Land

DDT Imported 29,000 kg in 1974, and 561,000 in 1976, 20 times more.El Salvador: DDT use increased threefold in 1977. El Salvador is the size of Massachusetts. The equivalent of 2,400 pounds of pesticides dumped on every square mile of cotton land over the mid-70s.

Doesn’t it Go Away?

Eventually. The half-life of DDT is 20 years.

Easily absorbed by fat tissue.

Pesticide applied by aircraft. 50-75% misses crops, and blows away.

Airborne residue discovered at the upper Great Lakes in Canada.

Poisoning the People

Great pressure not to report.Children under age 16 account for 20% of poisonings.Workers live right next to fields, so dustings reach them.When spraying, most barefoot and without proper protection.

Poisoning the People

Workers stir chemicals with hands. It’s ‘faster’.

Warning labels often absent.

200,000 poisonings occured during the 1970s.

Mothers found with 185 times more DDT in breast milk than WHO deems safe.

Poisoning the World

Cattle graze on former cotton land.

Milk has DDT levels 90 times above U.S. standards. We import anyway.

FDA tests less than 1% of imported beef.

NA birds who have their winter home in Central America get infected.

Conclusion

Pesticides imported from U.S.Illegal there, so send em down.

Pesticide treadmill.Kills pests at first.

Pests become resistant after 3-4 years.

Pest resurgence. Disease outbreak.

Stronger Chemicals used.

Rinse and Repeat.