Virginia Aparicio has appeared!

– – –

I went out for a walk to think about how to write standing from consensus.
I first had to put it down on paper with a ballpoint pen, old-school style.
It is written towards the younger generations, to whom the future belongs.
I reread it several times, crossing out and stripping every sentence of any combative tone.

– – –

«How’s it going, mate? Good morning…! Listen, isn’t this the INTA researcher you told me about in 2023?» – writes to me a friend of mine, from the agro scene (or as I like to call him, my “inside-man”), with an article from «Página 12» attached in the chat.

Whoa…! If Virginia made it into the media… then what are they covering up behind it? If the [scientific] fact that agrochemicals are everywhere ended up as a front-page story in the big newspapers, what is going on behind the scenes?

Sipping my morning coffee, I think about Data Centers, Patagonia burning and sold off, the Land Law, the Malvinas, the Solar Flashes… & of course! C’est tout évident! (It’s something evident, it’s very obvious, in French) Never mind… I breathe. I calm down. I reflect. I think with feeling.

– – –

For me it is singularly difficult to talk about this subject.

For a few days now I have been releasing natural dopamine. Happy about that.

Good dopamine, stimulated in the most sylvocalisthenic ways possible: moving around, doing transplants, chainsaw work, jogging back and forth, pruning, brush-cutting, and even riding onto a John Deere. All of it to relax and numb my body a little bit from the anger and powerlessness over something that exceeds us; and at the same time to beautify the ecosystem around me for every insect, plant, bird or wildlife in general. A kind of Biodynamic Hobbit, strongly rooted in anthroposophy, friend of earthworms, of Fukuoka, Savory, Mollison, Yeomans, Lawton, Reynolds & of Hügelkultur in general. A lover of compost, wood-chipping, ducks, laying hens and agroecology.

It is hard to say something free of the furrowed brow and the powerlessness, when everything has already been said in its moment and place; it is hard not to sound pessimistic, arrogant, ironic or sarcastic, when the whole bureaucratic show and the political pantomime are co-opted and directed by sinister characters who surpass fiction.

– – –

Not «Black Mirror”, nor «Stranger Things”, nor “Matrix», nor «Wall-E» dared go this far! Neither Orwell, nor Huxley, nor Tolkien saw it coming! (Or did they?) Perhaps everything was much more like «The NeverEnding Story»…

– – –

Lying on the grass I understood, and decided to write this for a 15-year-old boy or girl, those cohorts who lived their childhood during the pandemic and had a cell-phone device strapped onto them to hack their imagination. My deepest respect to them. I know my inner child hears me and guides me; and that my 80-year-old self from the future breathes with relief.

This goes out to the ones who are still outstanding students, flag escorts, bilingual, and are taken to the debates; but it is also for those who don’t fit into formal education. Every ADHD, autistic, or introverted, solitary, hermit-like person, or future artist. It goes out to those who still have the world ahead of them.

– – –

The first thing I tell you is:
I’m sorry for the world I am leaving you.
I truly believed I could change it.
The loss of biodiversity is perhaps
what shames me the most.
After 5 years of therapy I understood
& accepted that I couldn’t change it
but I could contribute to making a better world.

– – –

The second thing I tell you is that if there is a person who defends the world and public health, it is Virginia Aparicio. I had the chance and the honor of meeting her in person in December 2021, working immersed among water samples in her laboratory at INTA Balcarce, when they didn’t yet want to fire her, or open disciplinary proceedings against her, or dismiss her. Her voice gives serenity; her judgment – neutral, apolitical, scientific – is her most unbreakable tool. A person who did not buckle under the fear of being watched from the highest circles of Power.

– – –

The third thing I can tell you is… that I have nothing more to say because I already said it all before… I leave it to you in the sources below. I myself translated the results of those works by Virginia, presented abroad, from English into Spanish on October 4, 2023, to publish them on this site, after she invited me to see the presentation, since I have understood the English language from the cradle, thanks to my folks.

At the time, it was a strong call to respond and act from ethics and morality.

&, although my piece «Exiled Results» reached the newspaper «Tiempo Argentino» & some independent media outlets in Balcarce, nothing happened & we entered a plateau…

– – –

Personally, the subject almost made me somewhat paranoid & my dearest people recommended that I calm down because it simply wasn’t doing me any good.

I have lived in the countryside for more than 6 years and for 15 years I have run an independent, philosophical environmental journalism site. I am an engineer in natural resources and the environment, as well as an artist and citizen of this living planet.

Today, I can tell you this: the fault does not lie with the small and medium-sized producers… The Productive Matrix (what and how we produce) is handed down «from above.» But let’s not be coward, because I am sure that change comes «from below.»

– – –

I think about the super-intelligence (supposedly lurking) of AI… Will it have realized by now that the problem is not humans but only a small handful of them, who believe they can govern everything? Can’t an AI Agent be made to replace all the judges of the supreme court so that fair trials against environmental crimes can begin?

Well… (I’m knocked down from my innocence by a slingshot blow)

No… It can’t…

When AI is being financed by technocrats who seem to live on another plane and who are, in turn, owners or majority investor-shareholders of the biggest extractivist companies… then everything gets more bizarre and uphill…

– – –

Let me come back her…

& I say this from consensus.

Here it is no longer: agrochemicals yes or agrochemicals no…

Here it is that the National Government (no matter which political party)
cannot be censoring and persecuting a scientist
from its own state team for discovering and pointing out something
that is of global public health importance.

– – –

Many of us, if we were in Virginia’s place, would have chosen the path of silence. Surrendering to a giant Goliath, an immovable Windmill… But not her; she decided to Appear… and she Aparicio-ed with everything she had. For the first time, she put her wooden ladle into a pot that had come uncovered, and gently began to stir and biodynamize the situation.

Social media filled up with her voice.

– – –

In the meantime I turned 40
& my Faith in Humanity is restored
when I see girls and boys of 20
taking up these causes.

Nowadays, dodging avoidable rage outbursts, I choose gardening, local forestry and electronic music to make a better world, because I don’t have the diplomacy and patience necessary to keep trying to talk with people who have not yet made the direct connection between themselves and Mother Earth. It sounds Hippie, but then we watch Avatar and say, how beautiful! That noble labor I leave to the “inside-men/women”.

– – –

Virginia always says it better and more simply than I do:

«A PRODUCER needs evidence to decide.
A WORKER needs to know the risks of the substances they handle.
A COMMUNITY needs to know what is happening in its environment.
The STATE needs information to regulate.
& WE ALL are consumers of food.»

I wish that the generations of the future
may healthily inhabit this planetary space.
I wish, still, that it be our generation
that starts the pulse to achieve it.
Those stragglers of the eighties,
and so many other people who are on the same search,
the last people to be raised without the cell-phone era.
Those of us who got bored in the street,
and imagined possible futures.
The Resilience.

With much earthly love,

Brian Longstaff Howard.

P.S. Dedicated to Virginia Aparicio.
The people of the future thank you!
Wherever you are, thank you for appearing and being!

Every day
we hug
you from the Sun!

Recommended Sources:

Open Letter from Virginia Aparicio:
https://www.eldiariobalcarce.com.ar/cuando-la-ciencia-incomoda-la-carta-de-virginia-aparicio-199#

Interview with Virginia Aparicio:
https://huelladelsur.ar/2026/09/29/silenciar-la-ciencia-entrevista-a-virginia-aparicio-a-quien-el-inta-pretende-exonerar/

Letter from Virginia’s Lawyer:
https://www.radiogabal.com.ar/index.php/comunidad/el-precio-de-investigar-el-abogado-de-virginia-aparicio-cuestiono-el-sumario-del-inta

From Ploff.net, Research Essay:

21.12.2021 / BA 253: «Argentina, Extractivist Republic: The Irresponsibility of Those Who Produce Responsibly»
https://ploff.net/ba-253-argentina-republica-extractivista-la-irresponsabilidad-de-los-que-producen-responsablemente/

18.06.2023 / BA 263: «SPRINT Needs Help»
https://ploff.net/ba-263-sprint-needs-help/

04.10.2023 / BA 264: «Exiled Results»
https://ploff.net/ba-264-resultados-exiliados/

07.01.2024 / BA 267: «Argentines Drinking Potable Water Contaminated by Agrochemicals»
https://ploff.net/ba-267-argentinos-bebiendo-agua-potable-contaminada-por-agroquimicos/

02.06.2024 / BA 268: «SPRINT’s Voluntary Hope»
https://ploff.net/ba-268-esperanza-voluntaria-del-sprint/

From Ploff.net, Fiction That Doesn’t Surpass Reality:

14.11.2021 / BA 252: «Dystopian Fantastic Tale No. 4: Hostages of the Agrotoxics»
https://ploff.net/ba-252-relato-fantastico-distopico-4-rehenes-de-los-agrotoxicos/

30.04.2022 / BA 257: «Dystopian Fantastic Tale No. 5: The Results Arrived»
https://ploff.net/ba-257-relato-fantastico-distopico-5-llegaron-los-resultados/

Special thanks to my active Patreon sponsors:
Eduardo Wydler, Marcos Edwards & Ann Edmunds, Andrés Hillion & Luli Tesselhoff, John Kleuser, Laura Pagani & Alison Longstaff, who support me through my Patreon account: http://patreon.com/ploffawareness

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