ISLA ALTA
Rubén Ayala didn’t take me to where many of AZPA’s newer organic fields are located, in an area called Isla Alta, in the state of Paraguarí, which borders Guairá to the west. AZPA’s unconventional cropland traces the silhouette of the Ybytymi, a low string of hills that surround a river studded with a series of dramatic waterfalls. On the ridges above the falls gnarled succulents intertwine with mango trees, and the bulbous tops of spindly palms glimmer in the scorching sun. Sparse grasses and the red flames of flowering ginger plants dot the ground as Brazilian walnut trees—some can reach as high as one hundred feet—elegantly stretch skyward. A portion of the Ybytymi range is protected from development, having been granted national park status by the federal government several years ago. But AZPA’s land is just beyond the geographical reach of the restrictions. The longtime environmental secretary for the state of Paraguarí, Flor Fretes, helped in a recent effort to extend the boundary of the park, but it failed.
Zaldivar drives me through the plantation at Isla Alta, which is just a short distance from Salto Cristal, one of the area’s unprotected waterfalls. Across these hillsides span thousands of acres of both conventional and organic fields. This year’s organic cane has already been harvested, but workers are still bringing in the nonorganic crops. In one field, men and machines cut and load; the heat and dust persist as ceaselessly as the desolate drone of the engines. The organic acreage is bordered by forest and pasture, which is dotted with white cows that graze under a cloudless sky heavy with humidity.
Irritable again, Zaldivar shoves his hand toward the windshield and points at the fields. He tells me he’s witnessed the number of trees dwindle dramatically, “mostly in the last five years, that’s when you can really see it. That’s when demand for organic really picked up.” Along many stretches I can see that the thick tangle of forest abruptly halts at the tidy edge of AZPA’s fields. Although the company grows some conventional cane out here, this is the designated area where AZPA is expanding its organic acreage; it stands to reason that the forest in Isla Alta is being taken out for organic. As we’re leaving, we come to a spot where two dirt roads intersect. At three corners sugarcane bristles up from the earth; the fourth is still dense with trees. “Totally new,” Zaldivar says, pointing to the cropland.
I return to Isla Alta a few days later with Flor Fretes, and she brings her husband, Avelino Vega, who is a local lawmaker and farm extension worker. They grew up in the area, know the terrain well, and are both members of the right-wing Colorado Party. The conversation quickly turns to the clearing of trees. “Ten years ago there were no roads, it was totally forested. I’ve watched it change, everyone around here has,” Vega says. Fretes agrees, adding, “It’s very difficult to fight against. . . . Because AZPA’s a big business in the area, everything is just forgotten.”
As we drive the anonymous dirt roads that delineate AZPA’s fields, Vega brings up another impact of the company’s enterprise. Small farmers in the area used to grow a wide range of food and cash crops, such as pineapple, within the existing forest. But now, with the promise of higher incomes from organic, they have a major incentive to switch to sugarcane. The result is an overall homogenization of what used to be a far more diverse ecological gene pool, not to mention the loss of knowledge on how to raise a variety of edible plants without felling trees.
It’s challenging to figure out exactly what is happening on AZPA’s land. Rubén Ayala tells me the farm is fifteen thousand acres. An article from a Paraguayan government website says that AZPA cultivates twenty-seven thousand acres of a farm that spans a total of fifty thousand acres. And Raúl Hoeckle, then president of AZPA, tells me they have twenty-five thousand acres in cultivation but won’t say how much additional land the company owns.
Hoeckle is about a year away from retiring and expects his son to come on at AZPA sometime soon. Before the senior Hoeckle assumed his post at the firm, he worked in the plastics industry doing manufacturing and trading, and for a company that sold snack foods from Arcor, a large Argentinean corporation that makes cookies, candy, and crackers. When I ask about the deforestation in Isla Alta, Hoeckle gets cross. “Why did you ask? We don’t do it anywhere. The organic law doesn’t permit any of the planters to deforest. We don’t do it!”
Over the phone from his office in Asunción he goes on, in a still agitated tone, to explain that as a child he used to go to Isla Alta all the time because his family raised cattle there. The Hoeckle clan sold their land and later bought it back, and he says, when they did, trees had been cleared. “I can tell you that the owner from whom we bought it . . . they cut down trees before they sold it to us to make money from timber. But they did that, not AZPA.” Hoeckle, who also serves at the Network on Investment and Export, a division of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, wavers back and forth between asserting that the land has always been without trees and conceding that parts of the forest have been felled. “I can’t tell you who cut trees before, but when we sell or buy, our responsibility starts when we buy the land. Only then is it important that we don’t make something against nature—and we don’t do it!”
Fretes tells me it’s hard to believe AZPA didn’t deforest the area. “Who else would?” she asks. “Even if it’s not them doing it directly, even if it’s other companies or small farmers, AZPA knows the land is cleared for them to grow sugarcane. Either way, AZPA is ultimately responsible.” While AZPA itself may not clear land at Isla Alta, according to the people I talked to, forest that once stood is now gone and has been replaced at least in part by the company’s organic crops.
Clearing trees, or transforming any native biome, to create cropland undeniably wrecks diverse ecosystems, yet NOP standards don’t ban it. The official document outlining the rules never even addresses the practice. “This is the problem of how the farmers interpret the rules,” explains Salvador Garibay, a researcher at the Swiss-based Research Institute for Organic Agriculture, who works extensively with organic growers in Latin America. “If the farmers and certifying agencies and buyers take into account biodiversity then this wouldn’t happen.” Laura Raynolds, codirector of the Center for Fair and Alternative Trade at Colorado State University, frames the issue in terms of the market. “What incentive do organic producers have to not clear land? If they are involved in commercial organic circuits, where price premiums for producers are often quite low, they are caught in the same market dynamics as conventional producers and many may disregard rules that are not enforced.” If powerful farms and certifiers can bend and interpret the standards to get away with avoiding more expensive organic methods, then why wouldn’t they?
Although official NOP certification rules do not forbid the destruction of native environments, QAI is also supposed to inspect AZPA’s organic fields according to International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements guidelines, a set of global rules that prohibit “opportunistic ecosystem removal.” However, due to AZPA’s obfuscation, when QAI asks how the land was previously used, the company can simply say it sat fallow, was cattle pasture, or has been shifted from conventional production. Since apparently no inspectors have sought to confirm this, AZPA need not mention deforestation at all, and QAI can continue rubber-stamping AZPA’s organic seal. When I ask QAI about the situation at AZPA, its general manager, Jaclyn Bowen, says the company “has been an advocate for the organic industry and the biodiversity, improved soil quality, and water quality that it represents.”
ITURBE
The Asociación Agrícola Cañera del Sur (Agricultural Association of Southern Cane Growers) is a half-century-old farmers’ cooperative headquartered in Iturbe, a dusty town several kilometers down the Tebicuary River from AZPA. Each year AZPA augments its supply of cane by purchasing the harvest of local smallholder farmers. I’ve come here to meet some of the growers who supply the sugar maker.