Paraguay

Soybeans, rows and rows of soybeans all around. In western Paraguay the fields that were once thick rain forests are now soybean plantations. They stretch far into the distance swaying hypnotically back and forth in the wind. This ocean of soy, though, is dotted with small islands — houses, actually, that belong to the subsistence campensinos who once eked out a living farming an array of crops like sugar, cotton, wheat, and maize.

Paraguay is the world's fastest growing producer of soy beans. But the boom has been bad for native peasants. They lived for years on forestland that belonged to no one — logging and growing food for their families.

About ten years ago, the government either gave away or illegally sold the land to political friends in the soybean business. The soy farmers moved in, pushing the peasants out. It's a tense situation, with peasants squatting next to the soy plantations and hoping the next presidential election will bring them some relief.

As the world's hunger for meat increases because of expanding middle classes and changing tastes, feeding the animals to feed that hunger is having a significant impact on our planet's agriculture - nowhere more so than Latin America where forests are giving way to soybean empires.

Paraguay is the world's fastest growing soy producer; its eastern region - 2 ½ million hectares of it - is devoted to the crop that has brought wealth and development to one of the poorest countries in South American.

The global production of soybeans is on the rise, thanks to increasing demand. The fastest growing soy producer in the world is Paraguay, the landlocked country in South America still recovering from years of dictatorship and corruption.

Paraguay has been run by one political party for the past half century. But former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo is hoping to challenge that. Reporter Charles Lane has the story.

Bishop Fernando Lugo gathered his flock on a cold Saturday morning, and they came -- more than 600 mostly poor peasants -- to the rural city of Horqueta. Unlike many rallies in this impoverished country, it didn't take threats or bribes of food and alcohol to get them there.

In a country steeped in corruption and political puppeteering, they traveled as far as 50 miles to hear the "Bishop of the Poor" speak.

After a notice went out on the radio, entire towns packed themselves on the backs of flatbed trucks to make the frigid journey.