Brazil Tearfully Lifts GM Soybean Ban
Some of the commitments made by the Brazilian government during campaign season have had to give way to the hard realities of politics and to Brazil's drive to increase exports. The country wants to become an agricultural superpower. Brazil is the world's second largest producer of soybeans, but it is expected to surpass the United States to become the largest soybean producer as early as the coming harvest.
The southern hemisphere's planting season is just starting, and the government has faced mounting pressure from agribusiness interests to ignore court injunctions, requirements for environmental impact studies, and other regulations. The issue has proved so contentious that Brazil's 175 million people have been treated to the spectacle of a public exchange between Mr. da Silva, who was in New York for a United Nations meetings, and his vice president, José Alencar. After Mr. Alencar had second thoughts and said he would not approve the measure, Mr. da Silva was quoted as warning from the United States that the vice president "knows what he has to do, and he will do it."
As recently as June, Mr. da Silva's chief of staff, José Dirceu, promised that Brazil would not allow the planting of genetically modified crops. "The law will be obeyed because that is the determination of the president," he said then at a seminar in São Paulo. The Brazilian press has speculated that Mr. Dirceu engineered the timing of the announcement of the measure so it would occur when his boss was out of the country and Mr. Alencar was the acting president, as provided for in the Constitution. That way, the vice president, who is not a member of the governing party, and not Mr. da Silva, would have to bear the political onus of making so unpopular a decision. But Mr. Alencar initially surprised everyone by saying the measure "goes against existing Brazilian legislation" and calling an emergency cabinet meeting. "The next time, I'm going to be the one who travels," Mr. Alencar said Thursday night (9/25), after backing off and finally signing the decree while a weeping environment minister, Marina Silva, looked on. (New York Times 9/25 & 9/28 via Agnet).
