Argentina - the country side

The bus station is huge, pretty seedy and full of people waiting to begin their journey. Distances are huge in this country and airports few so the bus is a common form of transportation. The buses come in all sizes and various states of repair, ours is a double decker with seats that fully recline into cot sized beds. There are curtains between each passenger if one wants privacy. Headsets are available for listening to Tango or the dialog of Hollywood’s latest offering which is displayed on a large screen overhead. Each seat is provided with a blanket, pillow, and access to all the coffee you can drink. It is not long until I am fully prone and snoring happily in my little mobile cocoon.

We spend the night crossing the bread basket of Argentina, what was once endless pampas (grasslands) has suffered the indignity of the moldboard plow and like our great plains is covered in commodity crops that are pampered by petrochemical products while the soil rapidly erodes away. When I later suggested that we take a day bus back in order to see the countryside, a room full of listeners looked at me incredulously. Diana’s brother said “why would you want to witness the destruction of the land?” Why indeed.

The U.S. top salesman for biofuels, Al Gore arrives in Buenos Aires next week to flog his solution to peak oil and global warming – plant more corn and soy! And who better to fuel our automobiles than the third world. Argentina has all of this fertile soil and has fully embraced Monsanto’s mad agenda of GMOs coupled with glycophosphate herbicide. It is so convenient to have someone else’s back yard to play in now that we have trashed our own. Of course North American farmers will also subscribe to the wall to wall commodity crop program since it is a guaranteed money maker with all of the government subsidies. I hear that farm land in the Midwest has doubled since Bush and Gore have started the church of biofuels. Though I wouldn’t rush to invest!