ECO DEBT IN AGRICULTURE
Eco Debt means calling in the historical debt that the industrialized countries from the North have with the Third World for the use and degradation of the best soils, water, air and human energy. In order to satisfy basic needs, the Southern countries use goods and services to cultivate export crops, thereby jeopardizing their food security and sovereignty as well as the cultures of the local and national communities.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, the current development model is based on increasing exports of raw materials and agricultural products, as well as shrimp, timber and flowers. These extensive and intensive monocultures require large amounts of local and foreign capital, use the best soils and water and rely on the poorly-paid labor of rural populations. These crops also use technological packages based on “improved” or transgenetic and agri-chemical seeds: monocultures that not only contaminate the soil, water sources and the air but also affect the health of the laborers and the local communities while using large amounts of energy.

By undermining traditional forms of production and supplies of food for the local and national market, monocultures put at risk the food and cultural sovereignty of local communities. Loss of soil fertility, desertification and contamination resulting from monocultures also affect the local rhythm of life. Paradoxically, while the region’s agricultural countries often have levels of malnutrition bordering on 50%, they are also among the major exporters of proteins, vitamins and minerals.

Vast eucalyptus and pine plantations, used to feed the paper industry, have replaced large area of natural forests, eco-systems and agricultural land in Argentine and Chile and other countries throughout the world. It has been estimated that industrial plantations occupy close to 100 million hectares in the tropical and non-tropical regions.

Agro-fuels now form the principal threat to agricultural land, putting at risk not only the food sovereignty but also causing famine and often leading to malnutrition and death among millions of people living in the South.