5 In Argentina, there has been a steady decrease in the smallholder farm area: there were around 421,000 farms spanning over 30.8 million hectares in 1988. Almost 88,000 farms, or 20.8%, were run out of business over the course of the 1990s; thus, in 2002, only 333,000 farms were actively producing crops (Lapegna, 2013). In 2018, there were around 257,000 habited farms, a 39% decrease in number of farms since 1988 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos, 2020). GRAIN, an NGO that supports small farmers and social movements to help maintain communitycontrolled and biodiversity-based food systems, estimates that foreigners have acquired more than one million hectares of land in Argentina (GRAIN, 2008). Additionally, over nine million hectares of land are subject to some form of land dispute, impacting at least 63,000 people. Busscher and colleagues (2018) report on the ways title holders and land investors have pressured farmers to leave their land, violating their human rights: “menacing actions, such as with bulldozers or other equipment; the use of private security forces; intimidatory behavior and harassment, such as setting houses on fire; the illegal or unauthorized occupation and/or use of land by the investors; and the bribing of local police and judicial staff to facilitate their complicity.” Without government intervention and effective policies, the smallholders will continue to be subjected to violence and lose their land Growing Genetically Modified Soybeans The conflicts over land in Argentina and the expansion of the genetically modified soybean industry are interrelated. In 2006, 47.5 million tons of genetically modified soybeans were produced, and it is estimated that more than 90% of the soybeans produced in Argentina were genetically modified, according to the Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (SAGyP). Lapegna (2013) specified three negative consequences of genetically modified soybeans: “intensified economic concentration, serious environmental damage, and the eviction of peasants and indigenous families.” Smallholders lose their land because they are not able to be competitive with the larger corporations and their lower-priced genetically modified soybeans. Agribusiness corporations, like Monsanto, Nidera, and Syngenta, were advantaged by the introduction of genetically modified seeds and agrochemicals since they were able to overcome the barriers of growing genetically modified crops. In the early 2000s, during a collapse of the Argentine economy, many smallholders lost their land. Soybean production, driven by large corporations, was able to quickly recover and boost the damaged economy. The entry of large corporations into the Argentina soybean industry has caused issues with the rural population because locals are forced to sell their produce at a certain price to compete with the larger industries. Of the 35 genetically modified crop proposals that arose between 1996 and 2015, 80% were approved by the National Advisory Commission on Agricultural Biotechnology (CONABIA), including seven related to soybeans. The corporations involved in these applications were Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, BASF, Bayer, and Monsanto. Monsanto alone was the applicant on about one-third of these cases. These larger producers have investment capacity to put toward growing genetically modified soybeans that have a greater yield, but the indigenous communities have to make do with the limited resources they have. One of the strategies smallholders have taken to mitigate the negative impact of genetically modified crops in the industry is marketing their non–genetically modified crops and even organic soybeans as superior, allowing them to charge a premium price for their products. If the smallholder crops are contaminated, they may be unable to sell their crops at a premium price for being non– genetically modified and may lose their land as they cannot subsist. The smallholders have a lesser yield than the larger agribusinesses, so they must make more money from the crops they have. Beginning in the late 1990s, peasant farmers in Formosa began to gather together in markets called ferias francas, where they could sell their produce. These ferias francas are prominent in Formosa and in many other parts of the northeast region of Argentina. Previously, the peasant farmers
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