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. We sit in the Cañera del Sur office with the windows open; a ceiling fan whirs overhead, and a few of us pass a cup of cold yerba maté, a traditional tea. Francisco Ferriera, president of Cañera del Sur, says the co-op has 220 members, most of whom grow sugarcane on farms that vary in size but can be as small as two and a half acres. Wholesome Sweeteners has been working with Cañera del Sur for the last five years, brokering their deal with AZPA, and helping them get both organic and Fair Trade certification.
Cañera del Sur farmers earn their organic status as part of what’s called “group certification,” which is permitted by both the USDA National Organic Program and the European Union’s organic EU-Eco Regulation. The idea behind group certification—praised by many who promote small-scale organic agriculture in developing countries, and criticized by those who believe it can’t guarantee all growers employ organic methods—is that it allows larger numbers of family farmers to earn the organic seal while minimizing costs. Under this setup, a group of farmers pool their money to pay the certifier, a fraction of the farms are physically inspected, and if they’re approved, all the group members get the seal.
In the case of Cañera del Sur, AZPA—not the farmers themselves—organizes the group and pays for certification. (This is a common arrangement in developing countries with impoverished farmers seeking verification seals.) That means the organic distinction doesn’t belong to the farmers, but instead is the property of AZPA. Consequently, Cañera del Sur members can’t vend their produce as organic on their own. If the campesinos want to get the price premium, they are obliged to sell to AZPA. According to Zaldivar and Francisco Ferriera, if the small growers had to carry this fee, it would be their single largest fixed cost. On their own—without AZPA picking up the tab, and without group certification—most of these small farmers could never afford to get certified organic.
As for Cañera del Sur’s Fair Trade certification, Wholesome Sweeteners foots the bill, again because it’s too costly for the growers to fund themselves. As is true with organic, Fair Trade, or FT, is accredited by a third-party organization, which then grants the producer the right to stamp the official seal on its product packaging; for goods sold in the United States this label is issued exclusively by the nonprofit certifier TransFair U.S.A.; it is a black-and-white graphic of a person holding a bowl in each hand. FT-certified goods cost more for Western consumers because the items are grown using sound environmental practices, and, most centrally, because small farmers garner a higher—“fair”—price for their produce. The idea is to boost the income and therefore standard of living of peasant growers such as those in rural Paraguay. Zaldivar tells me that in the case of Cañera del Sur, FT status increases their earnings by about a third.
Wholesome lets the farmers keep the entire FT premium without requiring any repayment of the certification fees. I ask why his company doesn’t try to recover the thousand or more dollars a year it spends to renew Cañera del Sur’s license. “First, it’s good marketing for Wholesome, it makes us look good,” Zaldivar says. “Second, last year the market for Fair Trade in the U.S. grew by thirty-seven percent—that’s a lot more than the organic market.” In other words, the FT logo on Wholesome’s packaging is good PR and gives the company greater access to the burgeoning mass of socially conscious shoppers. Since Wholesome pays to maintain Cañera del Sur’s FT certification, however, the license belongs to the trader and not the campesinos. As with their organic-certification deal, the small farmers can’t sell cane as Fair Trade to anybody but AZPA, which in turn sells that sugar only to Wholesome.
A Cañera del Sur member whom I will call Eber Ibarra is thirty-five years old and has been farming since he was a child. His parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were farmers; as far back as he knows, his family has worked the land in Guairá. His fields are some distance from where he, his wife, and their two young daughters now live. They moved from their old house near their acreage because the road was too rough. About twenty kilometers from the nearest town, their current home is still remote but more accessible; for most of the year, the unpredictable dirt roads are navigable on the cheap motorcycle the family recently bought on an installment plan.
Out here the landscape is cloaked in rich grasses and trees, and the soil is either bright red or ocher; in every direction giant termite mounds rise like earthen stalagmites. In the distance round hills rise abruptly from the flat earth. Ibarra’s small,
