Something else Western consumers might find surprising is that although Gonzalez has been certified organic for over ten years, his farm has never been visited by an organic inspector. The cane he grows carries the seal of QAI, which has also never sent anyone to Ibarra’s farm (although he was once visited by the Swiss body Institute for Marketecology, which certifies for the European market). Instead, as is allowed under NOP rules, AZPA performs the inspections itself. That means when QAI’s man shows up for annual assessments, he first reviews AZPA’s in-house records on its suppliers. Then the inspector randomly selects a group of farms to make the trek to. The proportion of farms he visits isn’t something laid out in official organic rules, however; it’s entirely at the discretion of the certification body. The more farms the inspector checks up on, the more money it costs the certifier. This can, of course, create the temptation to keep the number of visits low. One thing external inspectors might not see is that some of these farmers fail to rotate crops. Because sugarcane is a perennial and the area has rich clay-based soil, the campesinos can and do leave the roots in the ground as long as they continue to produce; these peasants can’t afford to lose the income from planting a different crop to revitalize the soil. In his field Gonzalez has grown cane from the same roots for thirteen continuous years. He says he’s not concerned about pests and infertility from monocropping because it hasn’t been a problem yet.
Regardless of whether organic certifiers review the paperwork and walk the fields of each small farm, the reality is that cultivators such as Ibarra and Gonzalez will most likely grow without chemicals because that’s what they know and can afford. Chances are low that they’ll cheat by using pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, even if they don’t rotate crops or maintain good diversity in their fields. But, by not visiting the farms of each grower, and relying on AZPA’s audits, certifiers can miss other damaging practices.
YBYTYRUZÚ
Paraguay is comprised of two main ecosystems. In the country’s north and west is the less populated, more arid Great Chaco Forest, which reaches over the Argentinean border. Stretching across all of eastern Paraguay and into both Argentina and Brazil is the Atlantic Forest. This region used to be blanketed in trees, but now what remains is a devastated biome, fragments of flora and fauna cut off by cropland and cattle pasture. Today over 90 percent of the native forest has been felled, rendering the area, according to environmental researchers, “arguably the most devastated and most highly threatened ecosystem on the planet.”
Driving to the top of Acati, the second-tallest point in the Ybytyruzú chain of hills, not far from AZPA’s Tebicuary mill, I come across a newly cleared field. Jagged trunks mark what used to be standing; their stubble looks awkward amid the previously sheltered dirt and grass that’s now exposed. A curtain of intact trees hangs behind the freshly cleared two acres of land. Much of the Ybytyruzú area is protected by a federal law that designates it a Managed Resource Reserve, meaning that trees can be cut but only with a permit. Campesino farmers are sprinkled throughout the Ybytyruzú, their croplands creeping up into some of the last remaining clusters of native forest in eastern Paraguay.
Mariano Martinez is in charge of making sure the reserve does not further disappear at the hands of loggers, farmers, and fires. In his late thirties, Martinez has been working as the lone Ybytyruzú park guard for about fifteen years. The reserve is sixty thousand acres, all of which lies on unpaved roads, many rough and steep. Even though the government created the reserve, it hasn’t allocated Martinez the tools to do his job; he’s been given no vehicle, no telephone, no office, no computer, and no fire-prevention equipment. When we go to survey the cleared land, to look official he adorns himself with a khaki vest, a canvas hat, a pair of binoculars, and a tote bag from an environmental conference he once attended.
“This land is owned by Luis de Jesus Escobar,” Martinez states as we stand on the road facing the deforested patch. The park guard assesses that Escobar, a campesino farmer (whose name I have changed), has cut the trees so he can cultivate sugarcane. “No question, the size of the area and its location just next to the road, this will definitely be used to grow cane,” Martinez says. Along the road lies field after field of sugarcane. I ask if we can talk to Escobar about the deforested area, and with a wince Martinez shakes his head no. “I don’t want to go talk to him. It could turn violent,” he says. “Besides, the bad thing is already done.”
Almost everyone around here has a .38, Martinez tells me as he pulls back his vest to reveal a handgun (which he has borrowed from another government agency because the reserve did not provide one). “I’ve never used my gun, but people have pulled guns on me many times,” he says. On one such occasion he was walking around the reserve and a man he suspected of clearing trees put a rifle to his chest and told him to leave. Martinez recounts another incident when he was home with his wife and three kids and a car drove by firing twice into the air and once at the house. The bullet hit a wall and no one was hurt. The shooters were never found. “There are many interests: there’s the political, money, business interests—those are the people who are really dangerous,” Martinez explains. “The demand for organic sugar in the U.S. and Europe is a big pressure on the forests here.”
Escobar’s land, it turns out, is not in the reserve Martinez monitors, although it lies in the middle of the Ybytyruzú chain. Even still, looking across a steep, narrow valley directly into the reserve, deforestation is obvious to the naked eye. “We have to grant the people who live here the right to support themselves off the land,” Martinez explains. “As their families get bigger, they are not leaving, so they clear more and more land to grow crops to earn a living.” Martinez says that although residents in and outside the reserve are required to get permits to cut, the majority of farmers ignore this rule. And, despite the supposed success of the 2004 Zero Deforestation Law, enforcement mechanisms around here are essentially nonexistent, so the clearing persists.
According to Martinez many of the farmers in and around the reserve are certified organic, and it’s likely that Escobar will seek, and win, the official seal. While deforestation is nothing new to the region—most of the forest was taken out well before official organic arrived—the price premium for organic is driving cultivators to clear more land. “When we started, we thought certifying these small farmers was a good idea, that it would form a sort of greenbelt around the Ybytyruzú chain,” Zaldivar tells me. “But instead the farmers now have incentive to go into the forest and clear it away to grow organic cane.”
THE POWER OF ORGANIC
The laws enacted in both the United States and EU requiring organic food and farming to meet certain standards, among other outcomes, have contributed to a streamlining of commerce, greatly easing national and international trade in organics. Since U.S. regulations apply equally in all fifty states, a producer in, say, Paraguay has to meet just one set of guidelines to sell its goods throughout the entire country. Before the American standards were fully implemented in 2002, different states and various certification companies followed an array of directives in a piecemeal system. This made it exceedingly complex for a firm such as AZPA to crack the rich and voracious U.S. market. The EU’s rules, which originated in the early 1990s, have also helped its organic sector become more cohesive, albeit less so than in the United States. Because these are the most developed