Argentine farmworker and outspoken advocate against agrochemicals Fabián Tomasi passed away last week, leaving behind a defiant call to action

The historic victory last month in the case of Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto reverberated around the world. It confirmed what, sadly, hundreds of thousands of people already knew: the chemicals we apply to kill weeds and pests are killing us, too. Perhaps no country knows this better than Argentina.

After Monsanto’s (now owned by Bayer) Roundup Ready soybeans were introduced to the country in 1996, the crop took over. Along with parts of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia it is now known as the “Republic of Soy.” Between 2010 and 2016, soy has blanketed between 53 and 60 percent of the country’s total agricultural land — up from 28 percent in 1996 and 17 percent in 1986, according to FAO data.

Almost all of the soy grown in Argentina today is Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, genetically modified to resist Monsanto’s own glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide. Between 1996 and 2016, glyphosate use in Argentina jumped from 19.9 million liters to 237.6 million liters — a 1,089 percent increase. During roughly the same period, the area planted to soybeans in Argentina increased from 14.7 million acres to 47 million acres — a 216 percent increase.