*****

Aixa Ponce Cano was born in the small town of Avia Terai in rural Argentina with tumors on her back and moles covering her body. Her mother, like most other people in Avia Terai, lives near soybean fields that are regularly sprayed with agrochemicals meant to act as pesticides and weed killers.

Photographer Marco Vernaschi visited Avia Terai for two weeks last March and made portraits of Aixa, along with other residents, to explore the dangers of living so close to the intensive fumigations, and under conditions where he says the chemicals are not applied or stored properly.

For context: Nearly all of Argentina’s soy crop is grown from genetically modified seeds. While these plants, and the agrochemicals normally applied to them,