Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.
Number of articles on transgenics published by section and by year.
300
international
national
science
agriculture
economy
opinion
section b
others
250
200
150
100
50
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
The latter was released after a one-year delay, caused by the negotia-
tion process necessary for the approval of the Bio-Safety Law, which
finally took place in March 2005. This class also describes the negotia-
tions toward the new rules; it shows the divisions inside the government,
presidential pressure on the National Congress, and public dissatisfac-
tion about the “liberation” of GM crops.
The class “Landless Workers Movement - MST” describes MST's
protests and planned actions against transgenics, which involves the
burning of seeds, the destruction of plantations and even the distribution
of informative brochures in supermarkets to convince the middle class of
the threat posed by GM products. This class also presents MST's argu-
ments against transgenics, such as: the decrease in varieties of crops to a
few cultures, the supremacy of multinationals companies, and the decline
of production by small producers. Most protests took place in 2001, dur-
ing the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, and revealed the group's
integration with international movements such as Via Campesina.
Another interesting analysis is to consider the evolution of how this
theme was treated during the considered period of six years. Table 2
shows the distribution of articles published each year within the different
newspapers.
As Table 2 shows, in the year 2000 most of the articles were pub-
lished in the science section. In 2001, science was still important, but an
increase of articles published in the economy section is noticed. From
