Planet in Focus

“Soy is like a ticking bomb to me,” says Geronimo Arevelos, a campesino (farmer) living among a seemingly endless row of corporately-owned plantations in Paraguay.

Like many other small-scale farmers, Arevelos’ crops have been decimated by the airborne herbicides used in industrial monocrop agriculture. Now the world’s fourth largest exporter of soy, Paraguay’s rapidly expanding soy industry has taken to seizing farmland to expand operations, mechanizing the cultivation process and using genetically modified seeds to ensure supply for a growing global demand.

For many campesinos, displacement, crop failure, food scarcity and toxic exposure to agrochemicals lie among larger social, economic and environmental concerns about the soy industry’s unchecked growth. Beautifully shot, Raising Resistance observes the growing opposition to an economy which demands that one crop prosper at the expense of all others.

Best Swiss Film, Visions du Réel
Official Selection, Berlin International Film Festival
Official Selection, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

A panel discussion will follow the screening.