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BRAZIL:
Government,
Activists Still at Loggerheads
Over Land Reform
Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) - While
Brazil's leftist government
claims this was the best year
ever for land reform, the
National Forum for Agrarian
Reform and Justice in the
Countryside complains that land
redistribution efforts have
fallen far short of the target.
The land reform programme of the
administration of Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva settled a far
smaller number of families than
promised and is doing little to
nothing to transform the heavy
concentration of land in Brazil
or to expand family farming,
said the Forum, made up of 45
trade unions, church groups,
indigenous and women's
organisations, in its year-end
report.
Vice minister of Agrarian
Development Guilherme Cassel
countered that "this was the
best year for agrarian reform in
the history of Brazil."
>From January to last Monday,
111,200 families had been
awarded plots of land of their
own, and this week the total
will reach 115,000 - the goal
agreed with the rural movements,
Cassel told IPS.
But Joao Pedro Stédile, one of
the leaders of Brazil's powerful
Landless Workers' Movement
(MST), alleged that the Lula
administration is using "the
same tricks" as the previous
government, counting families
who had already been settled but
only received official papers
this year, as well as people who
replaced families that had
abandoned the land they had been
granted in the past.
Furthermore, he said, most of
the new farms are in isolated
parts of the country's Amazon
jungle region, and the families
are living "in terrible
conditions," unable to produce
or market crops.
The main points of the agreement
reached by the Lula
administration and the MST last
May are not being fulfilled,
such as the number of families
to be settled and the priority
that was to be put on families
who are living in MST camps,
said Stédile.
According to the MST, there are
currently140,000 families living
in these makeshift camps, under
sheets of black plastic, waiting
to be assigned a small plot of
land on which to subsist. The
camps are set up alongside roads
or on occupied land left idle by
large landowners.
Cassel, on the other hand, said
nearly 20,000 families settled
this year came from the camps,
and maintained that the number
of families squatting in the
camps is inflated by the MST,
and is actually closer to
70,000.
Speedier, more effective land
reform was one of the
commitments undertaken by the
Lula administration when it took
office in January 2003.
As in much of Latin America, the
"latifundium", or large landed
estate, dominates the Brazilian
countryside. According to the
Catholic Church Pastoral Land
Commission, just 50,000 people
own half of the farmland in this
country of 184 million.
At the start of his four-year
term, President Lula promised to
ensure land, decent living
standards and the conditions
needed for production for a
total of 400,000 rural families.
In the first two years - 2003
and 2004 - the National
Institute for Colonisation and
Agrarian Reform (INCRA)
announced that it had settled
117,555 families. Even if this
year's target has been met, as
claimed by Cassel, that would
leave 160,000 families to be
settled next year - a major
undertaking.
In the eight years that former
president Fernando Henrique
Cardoso (1995-2003) governed
Brazil, 524,000 families were
officially settled - a figure
that is questioned by the MST,
the country's biggest rural
movement.
Activists had expected the Lula
administration to make a more
decisive effort to redistribute
land and provide a boost to
family farming, and have felt
let down, said the Forum for
Agrarian Reform in its report,
released Monday.
The government has failed to
carry out real land reform
because it has placed greater
importance on export
agribusiness, has submitted
itself to the country's powerful
large landowners, and has
followed economic policies that
benefit the financial sector,
transnational corporations and
monoculture farming, Stédile
argued.
In the current cabinet, there
are at least three ministries in
favour of these economic
policies, while only the
Ministry of Agrarian Development
defends family farms, he
complained.
In the Brazilian countryside,
there is a conflict between
agribusiness - whose top
priorities are exports and the
incorporation of technology in
the countryside, which expands
profits while driving up
unemployment - and small family
farms, which supply the domestic
market with food and employ more
than 85 percent of rural labour
power, stated the Forum for
Agrarian Reform.
Cassel said it was "absurd" to
cast doubt on the statistics
provided by the government,
because all of the families who
have been settled have been
fully identified by name and by
their legal documents -
information that has been
provided to the MST and other
rural movements.
Noting that 40 percent of
families have been settled in
Brazil's northern Amazon jungle
region, the official explained
that this is the area with the
largest proportion of public
land, and said "land reform is a
better use of the land than
illegal appropriation by large
landowners."
He was referring to a phenomenon
by which large landowners in
Brazil illegally occupy public
land and claim it as their own.
In order to obtain land in the
more developed parts of the
country, like the south, the
government would first have to
update the "productivity index"
that shows whether rural
property is unproductive and
thus subject to expropriation by
the State for agrarian reform
purposes, under the Brazilian
constitution.
The index is based on criteria
from 1975, when a rural estate
was considered productive if it
was used to raise half a head of
cattle per hectare on average.
But today, new technology makes
it possible to raise three or
four head of cattle per hectare
and to produce nearly double the
1975 output of soybeans or
grains, said Stédile.
In this, the activist coincides
with the Ministry of Agrarian
Development against the
Agriculture Ministry, which is
opposed to modifying the way
productivity is measured.
Cassel responded to the
criticism from activists by
pointing out that besides
awarding land to "the largest
number of families in any single
year," the government had
quadrupled the soft credits
provided by the "national
programme to strengthen family
agriculture".
The loans granted climbed from
2.3 billion reals (1.0 billion
dollars) in 2002 to 9.0 billion
reals (3.9 billion dollars) this
year. Government investment in
purchasing and expropriating
land also set a new record, the
vice minister added.
Nevertheless, the rural
movements are disappointed in
the progress made by the
government, and are planning
major mobilisations for next
year, especially in March,
Stédile told IPS.
Their protests will coincide
with the International
Conference on Agrarian Reform
and Rural Development, to be
organised by the government and
the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
from Mar. 7-10 in the southern
Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
In addition, the Eighth
Conference of the Parties to the
Convention on Biological
Diversity will take place Mar.
20-31 in Curitiba, another city
in southern Brazil.
On that occasion, two issues
will be discussed that directly
concern small farmers: the
acceptance or rejection of crops
engineered with "terminator
technology" that makes seeds or
pollen sterile, thus forcing
farmers to buy new seeds every
planting season, and the demand
for labels on exported food
products to clearly indicate
whether or not they contain
transgenic elements.
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