Along Brazil's remote southern border with Argentina, a battle over contraband is raging. Tipsters have a toll-free hotline to rat on smugglers.
Police burn fields and seize sacks of seeds.
The target isn't cocaine or heroin. In one of the strangest twists in the dispute over genetically modified food, the government of a Brazilian state has gone to war with its farmers over their use of soybeans altered to permit use of a certain herbicide. So food companies, which use soybean oil or soybean meal in everything from chocolate to tofu, have been turning to Brazil's beans for their non-GM product lines. One British chain, Iceland Group, even says it imports its frozen chickens all the way from Brazil because there they can peck at feed made of conventional soybean meal. But a visit to the big soybean-growing state of Rio Grande do Sul suggests that Brazil's soybean supply isn't quite as claimed by marketers.