Desires for a New Year: working to eliminate agrotoxins from the food system in El Salvador
By Kristi Van Nostran, Companionship Facilitator, RUMES, JH El Salvador
Since last fall, the Red Uniendo Manos El Salvador, RUMES (Joining Hands Network of El Salvador) has been actively working with partner communities and organizations in a national effort to ban a long list of highly toxic agrochemicals, including Paraquat, DDT, and Toxaphene. Many of these agrotoxins have been banned in other countries but continue to contaminate Salvadoran communities, resulting in high rates of renal failure, cancer, and other public health issues. The statistics are alarming. Over the course of 2013, authorities reported seventy-one deaths and two hundred seventy-nine new cases of chronic renal failure attributed to the heavy use of agrochemicals in the area of San Luis Talpa, in the coastal province of La Paz.
RUMES and other members of the National Roundtable for Food Sovereignty lobbied tirelessly for representatives to consider legislation that would prohibit the use of a long list of agrotoxins. After an intense and urgent education and advocacy campaign, on September 5, 2013 the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly took action passing a bill banning fifty-three toxic agrochemicals. News of the ban made international headlines and RUMES and partners celebrated this as a huge step forward toward healthy and sustainable agriculture that will help guarantee food sovereignty in El Salvador.
But since the bill passed the Legislative Assembly, CAMAGRO (the Chamber of Agriculture and Farmers), politicians with right-leaning parties, ANEP (National Association of Private Business), and multinational corporations like Monsanto began lobbying President Funes to veto the bill. They argued that these lethal chemicals are necessary for coffee and sugarcane production and that there are other ways to protect the population from exposure. While Funes was not persuaded toward an outright veto of the bill, he returned the bill to the Legislative Assembly with observations and suggestions to remove several of the most dangerous agrotoxins from the ban list. Members of RUMES and the National Roundtable for Food Sovereignty have been invited by the commission of the Legislative Assembly overseeing this process to provide testimony, but as of the date of publish, the ban remains up for debate.
RUMES has responded to the argument that toxic chemicals are necessary for cultivating coffee and other crops stating that transformation of the agricultural model is what is necessary to protect all of Creation. This message is not only to policy makers, but to farmers everywhere; not only do other forms of cultivation exist, but there are numerous successful experiences of agroecology – models of agriculture that protect ecosystems and don’t need the use of toxic fertilizers – in communities across El Salvador.
Organic farmer, Alex Cuellar poses with Doris Evangelista and Edith Morales of the Red Uniendo Manos El Salvador. Photo courtesy of Doris Evangelista
Alex Cuellar, a local famer from the village of Guachipilin, San Pedro Puxtla in Ahuachapán is one such success story. RUMES’ Doris Evangelista and Edith Morales had the opportunity to spend and afternoon with Don Alex at his farm and to hear, in his own words, about his personal conversion from “poisoning the land with the worst of the worst toxic chemicals” through the ten-year process in which he has converted his land into a diverse and thriving, fully organic farm that includes tilapia ponds, pigs, chickens, production of fruits and vegetables, the traditional corn and beans, and a not-so-traditional bio-gas system that turns animal waste into cooking fuel. All without the use of agrotoxins!
“My land was dying.” he recalls as tears well up in his eyes. “I knelt down in my parcel and wept. I begged Mother Earth for forgiveness; I asked to be forgiven for poisoning, murdering the land that gives us life. At that moment I promised to work as hard as I ever had to revive her, my nana (Nauhuat for mama).”
In December 2013, RUMES, with the National Roundtable for Food Sovereignty, launched a campaign entitled “Desires for a New Year” that featured local farmers sharing their hopes and dreams for 2014. They expressed desires for access to land and the right to decide what and how to cultivate, the desire to eat healthy foods free from GMOs and chemicals, and respect for traditional and cultural agroecological practices. Our desire for this New Year is that, in solidarity, you might join RUMES as we accompany farming families around the country, as we all strive to live into this hope and belief in new beginnings.
