A Story of Resistance: Argentina’s Fight Against Monsanto’s Patent

Demands

Hannah Anousheh March 24, 2015

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During the 1980s the US-based biotechnology corporation, Monsanto, introduced genetical-

ly modified seeds into the developing world creating a cycle of dependency as farmers struggled to

meet the demands of a competitive global market with new terms: if farmers could not purchase

GMO seed, their yields would not be as great as producers who did purchase GMO seed. Prices of

agricultural goods would respond to the greater yields, further impoverishing non-GMO seed farm-

ers by increasing supply of the crop. As if these problems of land use and social equity were not

enough, Monsanto began an aggressive campaign to claim royalties on its GM seeds by pressuring

every developing country to adopt new intellectual property laws. The company used its formidable

size, with $11.7 billion in annual sales, and its influence in the US government to overpower almost

every nation that tried to oppose its intellectual property rights (IPR). Only Argentina, a heavy user

of GMO seeds as the third largest exporter of GM soy in the world behind the US and Brazil, stands

as an exception in the developing world as it continues to resist Monsanto’s attempts to patent its

Roundup Ready seed. This study aims to address the still unanswered puzzle of how Argentina, a

South American nation that has experienced economic crisis almost every ten years, has been able to

thwart a transnational corporation with more capital than multiple nations combined.

Monsanto’s Introduction in Argentina

The 1990’s and 2000’s saw the rapid global expansion of the soybean market due to the

dramatic increase in global food consumption in large developing countries, most notably China.

Soybeans are used as feed for pigs and chickens and soybean oil is used in processed foods. At the

same time, in the mid-1990s, Monsanto developed its genetically modified soybean seed, coined

Roundup Ready, which made the soybean plant resistant to the less expensive and more easily ob-

tainable glysophate pesticide. Argentina, the first developing country where the seed was introduced,

embraced RR soy as a solution to its economic problems. By 1999, 70 percent of Argentina’s soy

crops were GM (Bisang 2003; Teubal 2008; Newell 2009). Numerous developing countries followed

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in Argentina’s footsteps, for example, in 2003, Brazil became one the biggest exporters of GM soy

and Paraguay, Mexico, Uruguay and Bolivia followed behind. GM cotton has taken India, Pakistan

and Burkina Faso by storm and in South Africa, farmers rely heavily on GM maize (Adenle 2012).

While Argentina is far from alone in its adoption of GM seeds, it is unique in its ability to

resist Monsanto’s pressure for better patent protection. In 1985, Monsanto and other United States

technological and pharmaceutical corporations launched a powerful lobbying campaign in order to

make intellectual property rights the cornerstone of US foreign trade policy. Supported by the US

government, the company asserted its claim to patent royalties on all its seed products across the

developing world by first changing international trade policy. Its focus was on the Trade-Related

Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, which came out of the 1994 Uruguay

Round of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT). Dawkins (1999) claims that “With

the advent of TRIPS, virtually all the world’s nations […] lost their right to determine the balance of

private and public benefits designed to meet national development goals.” Unlike copyrights, how-

ever, patents laws are not transnational, so when nations’ governments opposed patents on legal

grounds. Monsanto was forced to coerce each country individually to give up the fight against IPR.

Most developing nations did not have the resources to ensnare themselves in long legal battles with

Monsanto or face unilateral trade sanctions from the US (Correa 2007). Although Brazil resisted

Monsanto until 2004, Argentina remains the last country standing in that it still has not granted the

corporation the legal rights to collect patent royalties. This study seeks to determine the source of

Argentina’s ability to resist Monsanto’s intellectual property claims.

Most studies cite Argentina’s legal inefficiency as the reason why Monsanto’s complaints

against Argentina have not been addressed; scholars argue that lawsuits get lost in Argentina’s judi-

cial swamp (Vicente, 1998; Corbett 2001; Czub 2001; Bentolila 2002; Shanker 2004). Varella (2013)

makes the argument that institutional instability and a weak judicial system actually mean that it is

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harder for countries to resistant Monsanto’s coercive legal strategies. However, none of these insti-

tutional arguments, however, can adequately explain Argentina’s effective resistance to Monsanto

given that the company has come to dominate the agricultural sectors in almost all of the nations of

sub-Saharan Africa, most of which do not have strong legal enforcement or judicial systems. In

many countries, Monsanto has completely side stepped national legal institutions by establishing its

own private regime of royalty collection (Filomeno 2013). In Brazil for example, Monsanto was able

to threaten soy producers into adopting a private royalty system, side-stepping Brazil’s national legal

authority. Soy growers accepted the private royalty system in 2004, fearing that Monsanto would

confiscate their exports in other countries (Filomeno 2013).

The institutional arguments also ignore the fact that Argentina’s judicial system has re-gained

integrity under Nestor Kirchner’s presidency (2003-2007). Upon assuming the presidency, Kirchner

worked to improve the transparency of the judicial system by establishing a judicial council made up

of a wide range of politicians and legal experts in order to oversee court appointments and decisions

(Brinks 2005). In fact, The Economist even called Kirchner a “benevolent judicial reformer” (The

Economist 2005).

This study argues that the answer to Argentina’s resistance to institute or enforce agricultural

patent law lies in the outsize influence of its agricultural organizations— the groups that represent

the agricultural producers who would have to pay royalties to Monsanto if patent law was instituted.

More specifically, the lobbying power of the four major agro-organizations, La Sociedad Rural

(SRA), La Federacion Agraria Argentina (FAA), Las Confederaciones Rurales Argentinas (CRA),

and La Confederación Intercooperativa Agropecuaria (ConInAgro), has enabled them to block

Monsanto’s efforts.

Mancur Olson’s theory in The Rise and Decline of Nations helps to identify what it is about Ar-

gentina’s agricultural organizations that has allowed them to have a stronger lobby in the national

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government than Monsanto, especially given the large sums of money Monsanto has put into lobby-

ing political parties in Argentina. The main tenet of Olson’s first theory of collective action is that

“members of ‘small’ groups have disproportionate organizational power for collective action” (Ol-

son 1965). However, in his second book, The Rise and Decline of Nations, Olson explores how larger,

national organizations such as farm associations or unions spur individuals to act based on the col-

lective good, listing the essential criteria that would enable them to mobilize their members.

This study finds that the Argentine agro-organizations possess each characteristic that Olson

describes. He argues that “Those groups that have access to selective incentives will be more likely

to act collectively to obtain collective goods than those who do not” (Olson 1982). The Argentine

rural sector is historically fragmented territorially and socio-economically. The wealthiest farmers

have traditionally raised livestock in the central Pampean region while the less fertile extra Pampean

region was dominated by smaller grain producers. Each agricultural coalition out one distinct group

of producers need to represent themselves against the rest of the rural sector or the national gov-

ernment. Also, because of the distinctiveness of each organization’s constituency, there is cohesion

or “unanimity” of interests among their membership, a factor that Olson argues, is important for

effective lobbying and mobilization. Furthermore, each coalition has a different organizational struc-

ture in order to adequately represent their unique constituency. The SRA represents wealthy, elite

producers while the FAA’s membership consists of small farmers who have been pushed into

northern Argentina. Although both of these organizations represent individuals, the CRA and Co-

nInAgro are large, multilayer coalitions of cooperatives and local associations. Olson’s original ar-

gument of collective action highlights that “members of ‘small’ groups have disproportionate organ-

izational power for collective action” (Olson 1965). It is useful for explaining the power of the SRA

but Olson’s later theory in the Rise and Decline of Nations explains that larger organizations can use

social incentives to mobilize their constituencies around issues that affect their collective welfare. He

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notes that large federal agricultural coalitions can represent smaller cooperatives by providing ser-

vices to them and these smaller groups then can use these social incentives to spur their members to

act on behalf of the much larger federal organization (Olson 1965). The agro-organizations provide

financial and technical support enabling the producers to survive Argentina’s difficult economic

transitions, namely, Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) in the 1950s and deregulation in the

1990s (Olson 1982).

Olson’s collective action theory also accounts for Argentine agro-organizations’ long history

of conflict with the state by acknowledging the inherent rent-seeking nature of the collective action

organizations. He explains that groups will lobby the state in order to accumulate more capital for

their constituents; they are more concerned with increasing the income of their members than with

the overall wealth of the nation. This behavior is exemplified by the SRA and CRA’s strong opposi-

tion to Peron’s social welfare policies that intervene in the agricultural sector but also their apathy

with regard to his other policies.

Argentina’s agro-organizations do not exist in a vacuum and therefore, I use the theory of

historical institutionalism to explain how the agro-organizations’ outsize political power is due in

part to their interactions with ongoing political processes over a long period of time— more than a

century for a few of them. The historical institutionalism framework is based on the notion that in

order to understand organizational outcomes, it is necessary to examine how organizations were first

founded and how they developed the tools for creating change. In other words, historical circum-

stances and political junctures shape the identity of organizations. This study utilizes the historical

institutionalism framework based on the understanding that it is the unique history of Argentina’s

rural sector that has made agro-organizations distinctly powerful compared to those of other devel-

oping countries (Thelen 1999). First, this study investigates the foundations of Argentina’s agricul-

tural organizations. Each organization was formed out of a distinct group of producers’ demands for

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the representation of their unique interests, recognizing that the lack of overlap between groups was

informed by the socio-economic and territorial decentralization of Argentina’s rural sector. The next

section is guided by the historical institutionalists’ belief in the formative role of political conflict. It

describes the organizations’ relationships with the state and with one another in important historical

periods, namely: the early period (1860-1930), the Perón governments (1946-55), the Alfonsín gov-

ernment (1983-89), and the period of economic liberalization under the Menem government (1989-

99). In the final section, this study identifies critical junctures in the contemporary period that have

informed the agro-organizations’ ability to both lobby and mobilize in resistance to the central gov-

ernment and Monsanto. In this section, I also take a closer look at the outcomes of the organiza-

tions’ historical legacies, examining what their resistance to Monsanto actually looks like. I find that

they are able to influence and in some instances create legislation that supports their rights over

Monsanto’s by using their large network of academic, political and social actors, through their ubiq-

uitous ideological rhetoric about their historical rights to seed in the public media sphere, and

through cooperation with the other agro-organizations.

The Formation of Argentina’s Agricultural Organizations

In order to understand how Argentina’s agro-organizations developed their potential for col-

lective action it is necessary to investigate the circumstances that led to their formation and how they

organized in their earliest stages. Panebianco and Silver (1988) says that “The crucial political choices

made by its founding fathers, the first struggles for organizational control ,and the way in which the

organization was formed, will leave an indelible mark. Few aspects of the organization’s functioning

and current tensions appear comprehensible if not traced to its formative phase.” This section ex-

plains in detail the formative characteristics of the SRA and the FAA. It touches only briefly on the

CRA and the ConInAgro because although they are important and powerful, they are conglomerates

that do not represent individuals and therefore are not as useful for examination.

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The oldest association of agricultural producers, the Argentine Rural Society (SRA) was

founded in 1868, almost a hundred years before Brazil or Paraguay’s most prominent agro-

organizations. It was made up of estancieros who owned large estates in the Pampas region. They grew

grains and raised livestock that was in very high demand in Europe, particularly Great Britain. The

incredible success of agricultural export helped it dominate the highest echelons of Argentina socie-

ty. Furthermore, members of the SRA controlled the political sphere as well, many of them held

high-ranking positions in government. The SRA membership stayed small, growing very slowly,

maintaining the wealthy, elite profile of its membership. This is directly correlated with Olson’s pos-

tulation that “distributional coalitions, once big enough to succeed, are exclusive, and seek to limit

the diversity of incomes and values of their membership” (Olson 1965). Furthermore, its size and

socio-economic homogeneity enabled the SRA to be able to be founded on a well-articulated set of

principles and to advocate for a cohesive, unchanging set of interests and goals. Members of the

SRA exalted free market liberalism, not wanting the state to interfere with their private businesses.

They also felt that the economy should center around developing Argentina’s unique resource ad-

vantage—gifted with the Pampas, wide, flat expanses of fertile land. They sought to sway economic

policy to benefit their private, commercial interests. SRA members who became political leaders ad-

vocated for a rapid modernization scheme based on strict development goals (Manzetti 1992). Man-

zetti (1992) describes them as “development-minded, ‘enlightened’ conservatives.” The members

adapted to new technology and identified themselves a ‘innovators.’ For example, many of them be-

came members of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) (Gras 2006).

These other characteristics coupled with territorial concentration in the Pampas enabled the

SRA to develop a strong organizational structure. It maintained branches in every agricultural goods-

producing province organized under the Consejo Federal. It was also led by the Comisión Directivo

that retains seventy representatives from all regions in Argentina who are elected democratically eve-

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ry two years. Many representatives were reelected multiple times and stayed in power for long

stretches of time, showing stability and continuity of interests as well as membership loyalty (Man-

zetti 1992; Gras 2006).

The Saenz Peña law extended suffrage and allowed for the inclusion of groups that had pre-

viously been excluded from the political sphere. It resulted in the entry into the political fray of an-

other organization, La Federación Agrária Argentina (FAA), in 1912. The FAA was founded out of

small producers’ desire to oppose the absolute hegemony of the SRA. More specifically, it was

formed spontaneously, out of organizational necessity. Members of the FAA, largely share croppers,

tenant farmers or small immigrant producers banded together out of the necessity of protecting their

rights from landlords who could easily evict tenants or control what they produced. They all culti-

vated grain because it was difficult to obtain licenses to raise cattle. While their production was not

as lucrative as that of the SRA members, the fact that grain export value increased to 50 percent by

1900 and that the farmland increased fifteen fold between the 1870s and the 1890s showed the im-

portance of FAA members for the Argentine economy (Manzetti 1992). This growth added to the

legitimacy of its efforts in favor of land redistribution and more government intervention to affect

greater social equity.

Unlike the SRA, the FAA is a large organization with many branches which would, accord-

ing to Olson’s original theory of collective action, make it less powerful. However, Olson’s theory

in the Rise and Decline of Nations, his theory accounts for the power of larger organizations like the

FAA. As Olson observes, the FAA provided its constituents with selective benefits, taking the the

form of cooperatives that gave farmers a financial support system as well as technical services. It was

also able to develop an efficient bureaucratic structure to organize the 27,000 affiliates it had attract-

ed by 1943. Furthermore, it maintained a high degree of organizational stability due to the like-

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mindedness of its constituency. This was exemplified by the fact that even with democratic elec-

tions, the FAA had only five presidents between 1912 and 1986.

The FAA and the SRA had an antagonistic relationship exemplified by the fact that the FAA

was essentially established in order to protect the interests of small producers against the domination

of the SRA. From early on the agricultural sector was fragmented and was only made more intense

with the creation of la Confederación de Asociaciones Rurales de Buenos Aires y La Pampa (CAR-

BAP) in 1932. This organization was founded out of the need of small cattle owners, who wanted

representation but were unable to fulfill the elite requirements of SRA membership, to compete with

the wealthy rancheros of the SRA. Ten years later, the FAA had 10,000 members and it joined on with

two other organizations to form the CRA. The CRA has enjoyed organizational cohesion as well.

Manzetti (1992) points out that one CRA president won three consecutive terms between 1912 and

1986.

Finally, ConInAgro was established most recently in order to represent the small and medi-

um sized farmers in less central regions of the country outside of the Pampas, who had previously

been unrepresented. It has become a powerful umbrella organization that represents 400 coopera-

tives. At the national level, the organization lobbies the central government while at the regional lev-

el it is organized into federations that oversee local cooperatives (Gras 2006).

Organizational legacies

According to Thalen (1999), institutions are “enduring legacies of political struggles,” a de-

scription that fits the agro-organizations and the historical institutional model. Agro-organizations

have been able to resist Monsanto in part because they have accumulated experience interacting with

and confronting the central government and one another. Their histories have equipped them to

oppose the Monsanto-controlled national government agricultural agencies such as the Ministry of

Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food (SAGPyA).

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The SRA took advantage of the lack of political or economic opponents from 1880 to 1916,

a formative period of economic and political stability and was able to become an intense lobbying

power very early on. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the SRA held absolute

power over the central government. SRA members formed the National Autonomist Party (PAN)

that enjoyed uncontested control until 1912. After that, members of the SRA also became involved

with the newly established Radical Civic Union party (UCR) and until the 1930s, this organization

controlled the Ministry of Agriculture. In this period before the 1930s, the SRA was able to extend

its web of influence to the military and the Church, and they became its close allies. Adhering to the

historical institutionalist framework, the SRA’s control in the first few decades after its establishment

set a precedent and gave it the early lobbying experience it would need to defend its interests against

Peronism in the 1950s, and against Monsanto starting in the 2000s.

The FAA, on the other hand was not an elite organization and in the first decades after its

creation it did not have any power within government so it relied on strikes and boycotts to make its

demands heard. However, in the 1930s gradually the FAA began to chip away at the political power

of the SRA and develop its own lobbying potential. The government under Justo, which originally

strongly favored the SRA, was forced to intervene in Argentina’s economic sectors confronted with

a decrease in market demand for agricultural imports and an increase in demand for industrial prod-

ucts. Manzetti (1992) highlights the fact that the Justo government acquiesced to the FAA’s desire

for a Regulatory Grain Commission that would serve to protect grain producers (Manzetti 1992;

Gras and Hernández 2008; Gras 2012).

Perón’s presidency in the 1940s and 1950s radically reconfigured the agro-organizations rela-

tionships with government as the political agenda centered on the specific needs of urban-dwelling

workers. This being said, O’Donnell (1977) argues that even though producers did not retain the

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same central role in the economy they held in early decades, they were capable of defending their

interests even through intense economic restructuring.

The 1940s marked the end of the SRA’s domination of the political party in power. The SRA

actively opposed Perón, as it represented the oligarchy that Perón wanted to dismantle. It voiced its

frustration with Peron’s policy of state intervention in the agricultural sector, a sentiment echoed by

representatives of the CRA. This was evidence of the SRA’s goal of increasing the incomes of its

members without concern for increasing income in the nation overall—evidence of rent-seeking

behavior that Olson described as generating conflict with the state. That being said, Manzetti (1992)

points out that “SRA-Peronist relations [were] marked by an open confrontation,

but one whose

forms and content were kept within limits by both parties.” The SRA’s specific set of interests re-

mained clearly defined in its clashes with the state and therefore, its opposition to the Perón gov-

ernment was limited only to particular issues. Its relationship with the Perón government is the first

example of the SRA’s aggressive opposition to interventionist governments, demonstrating that by

the time the Kirchners assumed power in the 2000s, the SRA had a lot of experience confronting

the state. The decentralization within the agricultural sector’s organizations was evident in diver-

gence between their politics, in that the FAA expressed its support for Peron’s policies, which de-

fended small farmers against landlords’ abuse.

The Group of the 11

An example of cooperation between the agro-organizations in confrontation with the state

occurred during the Alfonsín government (1983-89). In the 1980s, the central government depended

heavily on the agricultural sector to help the economy overcome the debt inherited from the military

regime by taxing producers heavily. Producers were enraged because the taxation was implemented

at a time when producers were already dealing with the falling value of grain and meat international-

ly. In order to make their dissatisfaction heard, in 1984, the SRA, CRA and ConInAgro joined a

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multisector pact called the ‘group of 11’. The group consisted of the most prominent interest groups

in the agricultural, industrial, and commercial sectors. Even though the pact was ineffective, the

agro-organizations continued to work together against Alfonsín’s taxation plan in a way they never

had before. In 1985, the SRA and CRA won the allegiance of the FAA and ConInAgro when they

called for a national strike. While nothing came of the rural sector’s cooperation among its organiza-

tions against Alfonsin’s policies, this set an important precedent, showing that the agro-

organizations could collaborate effectively on issues that concerned the producers’ capital claims

(Gras 2006).

Neoliberal Transformation and the Agro-Industrial Complex

The end of the twentieth century was a defining moment for Argentina’s agro-organizations

for two main reasons: they were able to survive Carlos Menem’s policies of deregulation without

losing their organizational strength at the national level. They were also able to effectively provide

selective benefits in the form of financial and technical help to their producer constituents at a time

when the agricultural sector desperately needed institutional support.

During the 1990s, a period of radical free market reform in Argentina, the agricultural sector

underwent a drastic transformation. The Menem government removed all export taxes in order to

encourage production for international export and removed tariffs on imports of industrial goods in

order to foster technological development within the agro-sector (Gras 2006). This neoliberal shift

affected farmers because, needing to downsize the state bureaucracy, Menem closed government

agencies that had previously protected agricultural producers. Economic crises during his second

term also meant that the state was no longer a source of finance or investment, replacing itself with

private capital institutions (Hanche-Olsen 2013).

In addition, the introduction of the agro-industrial complex meant that more than six million

hectares of land have been newly cultivated in order to meet the demands of the international mar-

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ket. In order to manage this land, farmers were forced to add much more capital to their production,

adopting new and expensive technology. The 1990s is also characterized by the relocation of the ag-

ricultural sector to urban areas as many large producers began to manage agricultural cultivation on

their land remotely, from afar, in the manner of investors or businessmen. Due to the increased

scale of production they began to rent out their land to contractors who oversaw the different stages

of production such as the sowing and irrigation (Hanche-Olsen 2013; Gras 2006). When multina-

tional technology corporations such as Monsanto entered the Argentine market, they embedded

themselves in the agricultural sector by working closely with producers to introduce new technology.

The advent of this ‘agro-industrial complex’ took a toll on the agro-organizations, who now were

forced to compete with these companies to maintain their autonomy and their distinct lobbying

power in the national government.

The SRA was the pioneer of an innovation agenda among agro-organizations. In the last few

decades it established the most important genealogical registry in the country, a genetic laboratory

that works with the latest biotechnological equipment, instruments, and the scientists who are using

it to expand the limits of what is possible, from the Institute of Economic Studies. The SRA also

established three educational institutions, the CEIDA, the ISEA and el Colegio Agropecuário de

Realico. It controls various channels of communication which it uses to inform and educate its

members and the Argentine population about new agricultural innovations. These channels include a

journal called the Annals of the Sociedad Rural Argentina and a television program called “Field Men.” It

also works closely with the industrial sector and, in 2000, it collaborated with other organizations as

well to found the agroindustrial Chain Forum made up of forty organizations in the agro-industrial

sector. These examples of the SRA’s commitment to innovation expose how it was able to help Ar-

gentine producers sustain their profits and maintain their independence from multinational corpora-

tions during the market-oriented transformation of the 1990s.

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Smaller producers were also able to innovate and survive the reformulation of the sector

thanks to the support of the FAA and ConInAgro. A 2013 case study of a cooperative in Santa Fé

represented by ConInAgro found that with the help of ConInAgro, smaller farmers have been able

to increase the scale and profitability of production (Hanche-Olsen 2013). The organization has also

helped them create a more business oriented model, using technology to obtain information they

need about prices and farming techniques (Gras and Hernández, 2008). Furthermore, Barsky (2012)

points out that agro-organizations have even helped smaller producers obtain university degrees

(Barsky 2012; Hanche-Olsen 2013).

By helping their members integrate new farming techniques and adopt technology, the agro-

organizations fostered greater loyalty and thus further incentivized their members to take collective

action and mobilize later, when they were needed.

A Comparative Case

In order to emphasize the importance of Argentine agro-organizations’ survival and success

it is beneficial to highlight the fact that Brazil’s national agro-organizations failed to survive the ne-

oliberal transition. Filomeno (2013) finds that “in the early 1990s, the agrarian bourgeoisie was fac-

ing a crisis of political representation.” The most powerful Brazilian agricultural organization, the

National Agriculture and Livestock Confederation, which was founded in 1964—much later than

Argentina’s most prominent agrarian organizations—was ultimately overtaken by corporate agri-

business. Also, the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives, which had historically represented small

rural producers reorganized in order to stay afloat in the 1990s and created the Brazilian Agribusi-

ness Association. However, in their struggle to maintain political relevancy, as Filomeno (2013) ex-

plains, both the CNA and the OCB had essentially given global agro-business institutionalized con-

trol over the local agricultural elite which “made it difficult for rural producers to articulate their IP

demands nationally and independently against the interests of the seed industry“(Filomeno 2013).

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Both organizations supported legislation that strengthened intellectual property laws and actors affil-

iated with seed companies within each organization overpowered rural producers.

Monsanto’s Gamble

Monsanto gave the Argentine seed company, Asgrow Argentina, access to its Roundup

Ready (RR) soybean gene that makes the soybean plant resistant to the cheaper and more easily ob-

tainable glysophate pesticide. In the 1990’s Monsanto bought Asgrow and prevented Nidera from

accessing new genetic strains. However, Monsanto gave him Nidera free access to existing strains in

1996 and Nidera was given the right to RR soybean seeds without purchasing contracts (Newell

2009; Filomeno 2013; Leguizamón 2014). Nidera spread the RR soy seeds to farmers throughout

Argentina and soon after they became dependent on RR soy. Why Monsanto did not request a pa-

tent from Nidera in 1996 has not been established because Monsanto does not share its internal de-

cision making publicly. While some scholars conjecture that Monsanto made a mistake in that it un-

derestimated the size of Argentina’s market for seed, the more likely explanation is that it was a stra-

tegic move to spread its GM seed and create dependency in the whole of the southern cone. Argen-

tina was a strategic entry point for GMO in the region because although neither Brazil nor Paraguay

had approved the use of GMOs, farmers in both countries bought seed illegally from Argentina,

needing the GM seed to compete with Argentine soy production. In 1999, once GM soy had per-

meated the whole of the southern cone and demand had reached astronomical levels, Monsanto be-

gan its intense, US-backed campaign for patent protection.

Leguizamón (2014) points out that the historical arc of GMO introduction in Argentina is

important because it shows that Monsanto took a gamble by introducing RR soy in Argentina with-

out patent protection. The multinational corporation assumed that it could create the GMO market

and then reap the benefits of it later but its plan did not work. This is the first product of what

Boekke et al. (2008) describes as the inability of foreign institutions to understand the practices, tra-

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ditions and behaviors of the society in which they are attempting to represent themselves. Historical

institutionalism accounts for the argument that Monsanto’s decision not give Nidera free access to

its RR soy in 1996, has an outsized effect on the current dispute between Monsanto and Argentina.

The fact that Monsanto introduced RR soy in Argentina before it was introduced anywhere

else in South America is another factor that contributes to the current dynamic. The rural sector

embraced GMO soy enthusiastically as it gave farmers a competitive advantage. This is important

because the whole sector has an unquestioning and unanimous desire for free GMO seed and the

right to it has been have of the few issues to unite the entire, usually decentralized sector.

In each economic and political transition, the agro-organizations confronted one another

and the state in different ways. That is to say, they retained their specific set of interests, organiza-

tional schemes, and membership identity, and therefore, they were able to accumulate new tools for

collective action.

Power in Practice

Having explained their potential for collective action through an examination of the agro-

organizations’ historical legacies, this study explains how agro-organizations actually lobby the gov-

ernment. In general terms, these organizations influence and, in some instances, create legislation

that supports their rights over Monsanto’s by employing ideological rhetoric about their historical

rights to seeds in the public media sphere, shaming politicians who do not support them, and polar-

izing party politics on the issue of patent rights. They cooperate with one another to augment their

lobbying power.

All four agro-organizations add fodder to their legal claims against patents through out-

spoken discourse about their historical rights to land and its products. Eduardi Buzzi, President of

the FAA, stated, “Upon establishing our position in defense of national sovereignty over the tech-

nology of seeds and the internationally recognized ancestral right of farmers to use their own pro-

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duction, we, the producers, the primary builder and chooser of seeds, have become hidden behind

the lie that we represent a minority position” (La Capital 2012). On another occasion, the Agrarian

Federation Argentina (FAA) and the Sociedad Rural Argentina (SRA) stated publicly that they “seek

to defend the own use of the seed and harvest it as it is the indisputable right of producers to replant

what is harvested without asking anyone's permission” (Diario Inédito 2015).

A Unión Cívica Radical Party (UCR) representative from the La Pampa, Ulises Forte,

demonstrates how the confrontational rhetoric of the agro-organizations in adopted by political rep-

resentatives particularly of the opposition party, as they share the desire to criticize the current re-

gime. He stated that the executive’s policy regarding patent law “exposes contradictions: while it

boasts about democratizing wealth, it is trying to establish a law that openly favors large corpora-

tions.” He continues, “The government claims to defend those who have less, in this case smaller

producers, but actually worked with multinationals.” Finally, he mirrors the morality-infused rhetoric

of the agro-organizations in stating, “We are intransigent about ‘own use’; you can not deny the gen-

uine, small and medium producers this law, which has existed for generations” (Diario Inédito

2015). Another example of this relationship between the agro-organizations and the UCR is seen

with respect to a proposed law that would grant Monsanto greater patent protection. A federal offi-

cial of the FAA said, “the Government only seems concerned to provide security to the multina-

tionals” and Lucio Aspiazu, a representative of the UCR, responded shortly thereafter, stating, “The

law only took a month [to enact] and it should not be like that. We must take time to discuss it in

order to protect the interests of producers and at the same time encourage investment in new varie-

ties of seed”(Diario Inédito 2015).

Representatives of parties opposing the ruling Peronist party (PJ) would not side with agro-

producers based on ideology. The most powerful opposition party, the UCR, is progressive, oriented

towards the left, and therefore opposed to the corporate hegemony of the agricultural sector and

19

more specifically the elite SRA. The coalitions of agro-producers are powerful, wealthy, and, most

importantly, are vigorously opposed to the executive government. It is easy and beneficial for oppo-

sition party candidates to side with the agro-producers and form a front against the executive and

the PJ party in general (Taringa! 2015; La Nación 2009) Gervasoni emphasizes that siding with agro-

business has become the dichotomous other option for a governor or legislator who is not allied

with the Kirchner government (Interview by author, Dec. 12, 2014). Additionally, as explained in

the previous section, the agro-organizations characterize themselves as “farmers with ancestral land

claims” or as “those who have less,” which helps more progressive, left-leaning representatives justi-

fy their support for the rural sector.

Another example of the collaboration between opposition party politicians and the rural sec-

tor is seen in Marcelo Munagurria, a leader of the CRA, who proposed the amendment to the Law

of Seeds in 1973. His view was representative of the PRO party, a liberal conservative party at odds

with the PJ party. Another opposition politician, Mirian Curletti, a UCR senator, presented a pro-

posal to congress on behalf of the rural producers in 2003 complaining about farm inspections car-

ried out by seed companies (Honorable Cámara de Diputados de la Nación 2003; Filomeno 2013).

Lastly, the three senators who proposed the farmers’ rights bill in 2005 were also all candidates of

the UCR party (Honorable Cámara de Diputados de la Nación 2005).

Collaboration Within the Rural Sector

While Olson argues that organizations’ individual autonomous identity and distinctiveness

from one another is essential for their accruing outsize lobbying power, when such organizations

unite and mobilize on issues that uniformly affect them, their lobbying power is unrivaled. The

enormous lobbying power that cooperation within the agro-sector generates was demonstrated in

2008 when the entire rural sector went on strike. Argentina’s agro-producers united in a mass protest

against new president Christina Fernandez Kirchner’s tax reform bill. Soy producers were already

20

frustrated by the high export taxes instituted during Nestor Kirchner’s presidency. They argued that

it hurt their business especially given that their biggest competitors, in Brazil and the US, do not

have to pay export taxes. Therefore, the new soy export tax proposal, Proposition 125, which

spelled an export tax increase from 35 percent to 44 percent, sparked a major backlash from the

agro-producers. All four major agriculture organizations (SRA, CRA, ConInAgro, and FAA) worked

all together calling for a nationwide strike which froze the supply of grain, milk and meat. They also

all led tractorazos, demonstrations in which they blocked roads with their tractors, rallying other

groups with grievances against the government behind them such as workers at meatpacking plants

who wanted higher quotas for exporting meat. They acquired supporters in cities, cacerolazos, who

sympathized with the agro-producers, a constituency that had never worked together with them be-

fore (Fairfield 2011; Richardson 2009; Teubal 2008). The protests debilitated the Argentine economy

for five months, marring Cristina Kirchner’s presidency practically from its inception. Although

agro-producers mobilized against the central government and not in relation to patent law, the 2008

strike was an important juncture in the story because it showed the executive government the full

organizing capacity and wide-reaching influence of the agro-sector. Also, in 2008 the four agro-

organizations formed a coalition called the Enlace committee which they have maintained since then

(Fairfield 2011).

The aforementioned methods of lobbying the government had a palpable effect on the out-

comes of patent legislation. There are numerous examples of how, when the Monsanto-controlled

agencies of the federal government introduce resolutions for new patent laws, they are rebutted by

amendments or proposals introduced by legislative representatives linked to the rural sector or by

UCR representatives working with institutions backed by the rural sector. Table 1 highlights this

phenomenon and also to sequence the legislative developments concerning patent law in Argentina1.

Table 1 examines more recent legislation beginning in 1991, but the most important piece of legisla-

21

tion concerning patent law was passed in 1973, two decades before Brazil or Paraguay passed any

laws concerning plant protection (Filomeno 2013). It is one of the root causes of Argentina’s ability

to resist patent control because it first established the producers’ right to seed and still stands as the

primary legal justification for that right over any intellectual property law or regulation that has been

passed more recently. While Newell (2008) and Filomeno (2013) argue that it stands as a single, iso-

lated factor, I argue that it is a product of the desire and capacity of organizations of rural producers

to mobilize as earlier on as the 1970s. My argument is supported by the fact that it was a committee

composed of a range of private and public actors including rural producers, that proposed the Law

of Seeds in 1973.

While it is clear that the outsized power of the agro-organizations is not due solely to their

wealth, soy exportation is the greatest source of revenue for the Argentine economy. After Argenti-

na defaulted on its sovereign debt, the Argentine government worked with the IMF, promising that

40 percent of the repayment would come from soy export revenues and their derivatives (Newell

2009;Teubal and Otero 2008; Richardson 2008). Agro-organizations recognize their control over the

economy and use it to their political advantage.

Agro-producers have begun to store their soy instead of exporting it through the use of silo

bolsas or silo bags. The latest most innovative means for storing grain, the silo bolsa allows agro-

producers to store their soy for a long period of time. The silo bolsa is a strategic political protest

mechanism deployed against the export tax because producers can store the soy later in 2015 when a

new government takes power. In an interview, Daniel Friel recalled going to a party at which Gusta-

vo Grobocopatel, the head of the largest soy producing company in Argentina called Los Grobo

Group, introduced him to the man who invented the silo bolsa, referring to him as “the man who

brought the revolution” (Interview by author, Nov. 22, 2014). The federal government is seriously

affected by this halt in the flow of revenue from agricultural exports. When silo bags are stolen, a

22

hazard of this storage strategy, most people argue that they were stolen by affiliates of Christina Fer-

nandez’s government although there is no concrete evidence to support this (La Nación Oct.15,

2014; La Nación Dec. 30, 2014).

The Role of China

Leguizamón (2013) draws attention to the fact that China is part of the global south and has

a long history of violating intellectual property claims. China has no reason not to invest in Argenti-

na because of its lack of patent laws. Furthermore, China cares about maintaining a close trade rela-

tionship with Argentina and benefits from the cheap price of Argentine soy. Chinese importers may

be afraid that if Argentine producers are forced to pay high royalties, the price of soy will increase.

Also, Argentine producers need China because it imports more soy from Argentina than any other

country in the world and its demand is still growing. Producers also rely on imports of the Chinese

generic version of Monsanto’s glysophate herbicide because it is less expensive than purchasing

Monsanto’s brand.

Another factor that makes China an important player is that it forces a wedge in the close

relationship between the Argentine government and Monsanto. The Argentine government does not

want to spoil relations with China as Chinese firms have already begun investing in industrial pro-

jects in the south of Argentina, which the Argentine government sees as important for job growth.

The dynamic between Argentina, China and Monsanto was exemplified when, in 2001,

Monsanto filed a complaint with the Argentine Foreign Trade Committee because Chinese glypho-

sate was being sold at a price lower than the cost of production, according to Monsanto, and was

therefore causing the multinational to suffer an unfair loss in demand for its own glyphosate. After

the Argentine government agreed to investigate the case, Chinese companies, the Chinese embassy

in Argentina, and Argentine producers worked together and won the case against Monsanto in 2004

(People’s Daily 2004; ICIS 2004; Newell 2009).

23

Conclusion

The puzzle of how Argentina has eluded observance of patent claims has important implica-

tions given that Monsanto has devastated local economies in a long list of countries. The transna-

tional corporation has robbed farmers of ownership over the products of the land that their ances-

tors have cultivated. In doing so, it has superseded nations’ laws, supervening governments’ authori-

ty within their own borders. The discovery that well-organized interest groups that have cultivated

tools for collective action over their long histories can overpower Monsanto is exciting in a develop-

ing but also struggling nation. It suggests that experience, organization and collective action mobili-

zation can have more political clout than pure wealth. It also implies that the fact that the agro-

organizations were able to utilize their long legacies as institutional fixtures in Argentine society and

politics is important. Monsanto, a foreign-backed power, misunderstood Argentine politics at certain

junctures.

What would be beneficial for a better understanding do this phenomenon, in order to con-

tinue to grapple with the puzzle of Argentina’s success where other nations have failed, is more re-

search comparing Argentina’s legacy with Brazil’s and Paraguay’s. These comparisons are not perfect

given the presence of important circumstantial differences, but as long as those differences are rec-

ognized, comparisons might shed light on institutional differences that have affected these varying

outcomes in the southern cone.

24

1 Table 1. Timeline of Legislation and Opposition

Year Law Outcome Source of Opposition

1991 Decree 2183 created new stipulations to the Law of Seeds. Article 41 established certain instances in which the farmer would need approval from seed pro-ducers.

Amendment passed in 1992 to explicitly protect producers from being charged royalties on saved seed and from receiving sanctions for saving seeds.

Originally proposed by CRA but presented in con-gress by Marcelo Mu-nagurria, a representative of soy-producing province and a former leader of the CRA.

1994 The Law of Patents of Invention and Utility Models. The Argentine congress under the Menem admin-istration passed this new law in order to respond to the requirements of TRIPS

Law was null and void due to the 1973 Law of Seeds

UCR opposed the law

1995 Monsanto applied to vali-date its right to the patent of its Roundup Ready soy germoplasm in Argentina.

The Argentine Supreme Court ruled against Mon-santo’s case for patent protection.

Argentina’s National Insti-tute of Intellectual Property argued that RR gene was not ‘novel’, meaning that it had already become inte-grating into the existing soy plant genome in Ar-gentina.

1996 Resolution 35: “Farmer’s Privilege” Added the requirement for authorization from the seed cultivator to store the seeds outside of the producers’ own property.

Resolution 35 passed but eventually made null and void by 2005.

The FAA and CO-NINAGRO, the coalitions of smaller scale producers united in action against this resolution (arguing that it discriminates against them because they do not have the resources to store their seed on premise)

2003 Seed company inspection of soy farms

All four major agro-organization united to ex-press dissatisfaction to congress

2003 Resolution 52 Issued by SAGPyA. Said that rural producers would be fined if they did not share information about the amounts and varieties of seeds they had.

Resolved by 2005

25

2003 Regalías extendidas (pri-

vate royalties system creat-ed in 1999) came under fire.

Proyecto de Comunicacion complained about las re-galías extendidas. It cites a document signed by all four agro-organizations.

Senator for the Union Civica Radical (UCR) party, Mirian Curletti, presented the proposal to congress in 2003.

2005 Las regalias globales the SAGPyA proposed a system in which rural pro-ducers would be taxed based on the price of their exports internationally.

S-709 farmers’ rights bill reiterated producers rights to save seeds and store them where they want. It was a collaborate effort of the agro-organizations and the work of FAA and CRA university and grain mis-sion collaborators are cited.

UCR senators Ricardo Taffarel, Juan Marino, and Ernesto Sanz presented the bill in 2005

2006 Monsanto sued European importers of Argentine soy.

The Argentine government requested to be named as a third party in the case with the European Union. In 2010, the European Union Tribunal ruled against Monsanto.

26

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