Brazil faced with need to ensure land distribution

The distribution of land in Brazil remains an unsolved problem and is more complex than it was in the crisis observed a few decades ago, according to representatives from social movements and specialists heard by Agência Brasil. Data from the 2006 Agriculture Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (“IBGE”) bring to light the country’s concentrated land-owning structure. At the time, there were 15,012 properties with an area of over 2.5 thousand hectares each, totaling 98,480 million hectares of land.

The agrarian reform is not only a challenge, but also a constitutional obligation that should be fulfilled by the government at federal, regional, and local levels—just like health care and education, remarks Professor Ariovaldo Umbelino, from the University of São Paulo (“USP”). In his view, “the agrarian reform is a tool for public policy [making] that aims to enable the land to fulfill its social role and the income to be distributed more evenly throughout Brazilian society.”

Umbelino believes the distribution of land is also crucial to ending conflicts. “The barbarity witnessed in the Brazilian field provides compelling evidence for the country’s urgent need to carry out a land reform,” he says. Over the last 15 years, according to the expert, 524  people were murdered in the field, and 19,548 conflicts were reported, with 10.5 million people involved.

Agribusiness versus small farmers

Apart from historic challenges, new factors have arisen which add to the gravity of the issue, like the development of agribusiness, which changed the organization of the agricultural sector. “Agribusiness relies entirely on large expanses of land, so the maintenance of plantations and its attack upon the lands of slave descendants, indigenous, and the Amazon Rainforest, as well as upon protection areas and conservation units, is part of the logic of agribusiness,” explains Diego Moreira, member of the national board of coordinators of the Landless Workers' Movement (“MST”).

The movement estimates that over 200 thousand people currently live in camps, using black tarps for a roof, and with no assistance whatsoever. Nonetheless, “the classic agrarian reform has become outdated,” he says. “Market logic and land appropriation seized control of the Brazilian field,” which, in his view, brought about an economic and political obstacle that makes reforms impossible.

MST calls for what it terms a popular agrarian reform, made up of three basic elements: land expropriation, the preservation of the environment, and the production of healthy food. Moreira goes on to say that there are more than 5 million field workers in the city who want to produce food and make their living from agriculture. This could diversify production, ensure healthy food and also encourage families to settle down in rural areas.

To keep families in the countryside, Sérgio Sauer, a sociology professor at the University of Brasília points out that is necessary to guarantee universal access to credit programs. Today, he claims, over two thirds of family farmers are not reached by credit lines.

“The challenge of a new government would be like simultaneously generating dividends that are not only based on producing and exporting primary goods, bringing down land prices, and implementing more solid policies for the rural sector,” he says, adding that these policies should seek better conditions for life in these territories, including people’s access to education, electricity and the internet.

Environment protection and field work

Sauer argues that, from the environmentalist’s standpoint, a compromise should be reached between the conservation movements and the populations that have occupied certain territories for years: “Some populations are being threatened with eviction [to make room for preservation units.]” On the other hand, he maintains, it is necessary to ensure supervision, so that traditional territories and conservation units are protected.

¨The sector’s companies want more areas for the expansion of their activities. The Brazilian Association of Agribusiness (“Abag”), supported by figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), says that the country should increase by 40 percent its supply of foods up to the middle of  the 21st century. It further declares that, to achieve this purpose, it would be imperative to expand the space given to agriculture and regularize rural properties, especially in the country’s northern region.

The Association also declares that planning and the training of the workforce are other key issues in the sector. “We need to use modern tools, including satellites and computer science, to make the growth in agriculture more predictable, i.e., how and in what direction we’ll grow,” the note sent to Agência Brasil reads.

Aside from land ownership, the production of healthy foods should also be viewed as a challenge in addressing the land-owning issue, according to the National Agroecology Articulation (“ANA”). The organization argues that this production brings benefits not just to the kitchen but also to the country’s sovereignty, since most of the seeds used today in agriculture are produced by international companies, which genetically modify them. Thus, natural seeds—referred to as creole—are less and less often found and seen to thrive, due to the effects of chemicals.

“The production is concentrated on a few commodities, and the production of many foodstuffs in the country has been on the wane,” says ANA executive secretary Dênis Monteiro.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, Brazil is the biggest soy exporter on the planet. Altogether, the soy complex accounts for 41% of all exports in agribusiness, followed by meats, especially chicken, and then sugar and alcohol.

Monteiro highlights that the grains are not enough to make the population’s eating habits diversified, and that the widespread use of pesticides in the production chain is yet another problem. During the last five years, Brazil has ranked first among pesticide users, according to the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and For Life, formed by researchers and organizations from society. For this reason, movements advocating the expansion of the National Program for the Reduction in the Use of Pesticides, whose creation was approved in August by the National Commission for Agroecology and Organic Production.

In their response to the criticism expressed by the social movements, Abag argued that the development of agribusiness has “followed standards set forth by science and by the research. […] Tropical Brazil has heat and humidity—the propitious environment for the dissemination of microorganisms and pathogens; Bringing plagues and diseases under control is crucial for production with competitiveness, in such a way that, just as it is for people, medicines are fundamental for plants too.”

For the social movements, the logic of production based on large companies is by no means the most sustainable one, or the only option available. “Family agriculture and traditional populations can present answers to the challenge of producing health food,” says ANA’s secretary. To meet this goal, he claims, investments should be made in solid policies, specifically dedicated to this purpose. “That’s not what happens. The Brazilian government is really efficient at supporting agribusiness for exports, but rather slow at supporting family agriculture,” Dênis Monteiro remarks.

He notes that the challenge of granting democratic access to land in Brazil is not a recent one. It may be said that it dates back to the Law of Lands, from 1850, which prevented immigrants and former slaves from having the right to own land, and to the days when the country was being colonized, when plantations were first established and granted.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira

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