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Argentina’s agricultural transformation over the past 20 years-from prime producer of grass-finished beef to one of the globe’s genetically modified crop-producing powerhouses-is often hailed as triumph of high-tech ag. Starting in the 1970s and accelerating recently, high crop prices and various government policies inspired ranchers in the fertile Pampas and Chaco regions to plow up pasture-releasing large amounts to carbon in the process-to plant soybeans, mainly for export markets. In the mid-1990s, when Monsanto rolled out its soybean seeds engineered to resist herbicide, Argentina’s new crop farmers were early adapters.

Today, Argentina is the globe’s third-largest soy producer-and nearly 100 percent of its soy crop is genetically altered. The trend has certainly benefited the GMO seed and agrichemical industry-as the below charts show, herbicide, pesticide, and fertilizer use has soared over the past 15 years.

But what about the people who live in the country’s agricultural regions?  A recent article by Associated Press reporters Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko paints a grim picture of life in the farm belt in the age of industrial corn and soy:

In Santa Fe, cancer rates are two times to four times higher than the national average. In Chaco, birth defects quadrupled in the decade after biotechnology dramatically expanded farming in Argentina.

The story quotes a pediatrician and neonatologist names Medardo Avila Vazquez, who has been moved to found a group called Doctors of Fumigated Towns. “We’ve gone from a pretty healthy population to one with a high rate of cancer, birth defects, and illnesses seldom seen before,” he tells Warren and Pisarenko.