Topic: Brazil

The WTO and the Devastating Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry in Brazil
Maria Luisa Mendonça
February 13, 2006 - Brazil is the world's largest exporter of sugar. In 2004, the country exported 15.7 million tons of the product. According to estimates by the exporters, the demand will likely grow by 3 million tons per year. The sugarcane industry was the largest growing sector of agribusiness in 2005. In comparison to the production of soy (one of the principal agricultural products exported by Brazil), which grew 1.3%, the production of derivatives of sugarcane grew 26.7% this year. This tendency of growth will most likely continue, starting with the Brazilian government's negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Broadening the Discourse of “Negotiated Land Reform”: A Comparison Between Land Reform Projects in South Africa and Brazil
Isabella Kenfield, ICARRD
February 13, 2006 - Mainstream agrarian reform policymakers construct discourse of “negotiated land reform” to describe market-led agrarian reform (MLAR). This discourse constrains the terms of negotiation over land reform to a purely market-oriented lexicon. MLAR proponents believe the purpose of land reform is to boost agricultural efficiency in order to promote economic equity. Through MLAR’s adherence to the willing-seller, willing-buyer principle, the terms of negotiation over the mechanism for land reform are limited to private land transactions. MLAR’s reference point of the market for its definition of “negotiation” relegates the tactics practiced by rural social movements such as the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), in particular the occupation of unproductive land, as non-negotiated land reform. This paper will critique MLAR’s discourse of “negotiation” to highlight its limitations, and argues that the MST is creating and participating in a genuine negotiated agrarian reform. Through a comparison of research and experiences from agrarian reform projects in South Africa and Brazil, this paper will describe the negative impacts of MLAR’s limited scope of negotiation, and will highlight how the MST’s broadening of the terms of negotiation of agrarian reform, in relation to both purpose and mechanism, is resulting in successful land reform. This paper calls for an expanded margin of discourse of land reform negotiation in order to create successful agrarian reform policies, and social and economic justice for the rural poor.

The WTO and the Destructive Effects of the Sugarcane Industry in Brazil
Maria Luisa Mendonça
February 13, 2006 - The sugarcane industry is Brazil’s fastest-growing agribusiness of 2005. Its expansion has brought with it serious consequences for the country, such as environmental destruction, removal of agricultural workers from their land and frequent workers’ rights violations. Sugarcane plant supervisors demand that each worker cut, on average, twelve to fifteen tons of sugarcane per day. Between January 2004 and September 2005, the Migrants’ Pastoral registered eight workers’ deaths due to an excess of work in the cane fields of the Ribeirão Preto region alone.

Residents Protest Lula’s Northeast Water Plan
Bill Hinchberger, International Relations Center (IRC)
November 11, 2005 - For decades politicians like Cardoso and now Lula have used the suffering of smallholders like those that populate Graciliano Ramos' novel Barren Lives to convince taxpayers to throw money at the northeast. “They use the drought to attract public resources and transform them into private property,” says Roberto Malvezzi. In the 1990s, the press discovered that a single congressional leader had six wells, producing 26,000 gallons a day, on private land in the middle of the sertão. The phenomenon is embedded in the Brazilian political process and it has a name—the Drought Industry.

Violence in the Countryside and Land Reform
Maria Luisa Mendonça and Roberto Rainha
September 20, 2005 - This article analyzes violence in the countryside and land reform during 2003 and part of 2004. In 2003, the inauguration of the Lula government created great expectations. According to the Pastoral Commission on Land (CPT), “The year 2003 began with the euphoria of hope that can overcome fear. The rural workers believed that the time had come for a profound change, that Land Reform would finally happen.”

Land For Those Who Work It: Can committing a crime be the only way to uphold the constitution?
Pauline Bartolone, Clamor Magazine
September 05, 2005 - "On the news they say, 'we invaded.' The word invade is theirs. The land is everybody's. So there's no such thing as invading land that is everybody's." Hilario is part of Brazil's landless workers movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra, MST) . The backbone of their movement is land occupation. Today, 47 percent of Brazil's land is owned by just 1 percent of the population, making the country's land distribution the second most unequal in the world. As a result, a class of four and a half million people are left on the verge of starvation, without land of their own.

Paraná will host Latin American School of Agroecology
Lúcia Nórcio, Agência Brasil
September 05, 2005 - Curitiba - Establishing an exchange network among peasant farmers throughout Latin America is one of the goals of the Latin American School of Agroecology, which will be inaugurated tomorrow (27/8) in the municipality of Lapa, in the state of Paraná. The school represents a partnership between the governments of Venezuela and Paraná, the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), the International Via Campesina (an organization that brings together movements involved in the struggle for land from all over the world), and the MST. The school is located within an MST agrarian reform project known as the Contestado settlement. The protocol of intentions for its creation was signed in January during the V World Social Forum.

Landless Peasants March in Brazil, Build a new Road by Walking
Deborah James, Common Dreams News Center
July 20, 2005 - On May 17th, Brazilian news media reported that 50 people were injured as landless peasants clashed with police. Like our corporate media in the U.S., this focus overshadowed the real story; that 12,000 poor landless peasants had recently completed a Herculean 150 mile, 17 day-long march across the country to raise awareness about the crucial need for land reform in Brazil.

Water and Human Rights
Roberto Malvezzi
July 12, 2005 - While 20% of the Brazilian population (about 37 million people) lacks access to potable water, in rural areas the portion rises to 90% without proper sanitation, including access to clean drinking water. The crisis reaches into the periphery of the cities. Basically, it is the poor who go thirsty.

The Counter-Agrarian Reform of the World Bank
Marcelo Resende and Maria Luisa Mendonça, Social Network for Justice and Human Rights (Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos)
July 12, 2005 - From January 2003 to July 2004, Brazil received $3.2 billion in loans from the World Bank and from the Inter-American Development Bank. During this same period, Brazilian public institutions paid $6.9 billion to these banks. In other words, Brazil sent abroad $3.7 billion more than it received.

MST Asks for Urgent Action: Court of Justice of Para will sentence appeal in the lawsuit of the massacre in Eldorado dos Carajas
MST (Landless Workers Movement)
November 15, 2004 - The Court of Justice of Para will sentence appeal in the lawsuit of the massacre in Eldorado dos Carajas. On November 19th the Court of Justice of Para will sentence the appeal in the lawsuit that is investigating the participation of military policemen during the massacre in Eldorado dos Carajas.

A Place in the Country
Judy Coode, Sojourners Magazine
July 09, 2004 - A broad grassroots movement seeks land, equity, and dignity in Brazil. In the past 20 years, more than a million people in Brazil have participated in the most vibrant, well-organized, and far-reaching grassroots association in Latin America, the Landless Workers' Movement. In a country of profound economic disparity and poverty, the movement has emerged as a significant force for agrarian reform, as well as progress in education, health care, agricultural production, promotion of women's rights, and democratic participation. . . . . Read More

Brazil : Agrarian Reform for Informal Lands
Mario Osava, Inter Press Service (IPS)
June 03, 2004 - Nearly a quarter of Brazilian territory (200 million hectares, equivalent to the area of Mexico) does not have known landowners because there is no legal register of titles. During the previous administration, of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the annual average number of families settled reached 80,000, while last year, under Lula's watch the total was 37,000. In addition to these formal efforts by the Brazilian government, peasant organizations have continued to push for more immediate land access in ways that have proven to be as successful. . . . . Read More

Scoping Study on Land Policy Research in Latin America
Stephen Baranyi, Carmen Diana Deere & Manuel Morales, Baranyi-The North-South Institute (NSI)-Canada
May 21, 2004 - After being relegated to the margins of development debates for over a decase, land policy has moved rapidly up the international agenda in recent years. In Latin America, a wave of market-oriented land policy reforms were adopted in the 1990s, from Mexico through Honduras and Nicaragua to Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. At the same time less visible yet important innovations were taking place on a number of fronts: joint titling to couples to promote gender equity; the regulariazation of indigenous peoples' titles to communal lands. . . . . Yet by the turn of the century frustrations with the uneven pace of change led certain social movmements and political parties to revive the banner of redistributive land reform. . . . Read More

Backgrounder Part II-The World Bank and Land Reform in Brazil
Sérgio Sauer, National Forum on Agrarian Reform and Rural Justice
November 06, 2003 - The second of a three part report on the history and status of land reform in Brazil. In this section of the report Sérgio Sauer focuses on the role of the World Bank in shaping land reform policy at the national level and its emphasis on the establishment of land markets.

TAKE ACTION-Armed landlords prevent agrarian reform in Brazil
La Vía Campesina & FIAN
October 09, 2003 - Since the end of 2002, 180 landless families are camping on the border of municipal land in Foy do Jordão,Paraná. Local landlords created armed military groups to protect their properties, harrass landless families and hinder the expropriation of land for the agrarian reform.

The Crime of the Latifundio
Alai-Amlatina
October 02, 2003 - Historically the violence in the Brazilian countryside has been caused by the enormous concentration of land by the few. As a result, hundreds of rural workers have been murdered; the land monopoly generates poverty, unemployment, and the exclusion from political life while preserving the power of rural oligarchs.

Brazil Activists Target Monsanto
BBC NEWS
June 03, 2003 - Members of the million-strong landless movement in Brazil (MST) have invaded a farm owned by biotech giant Monsanto in the central state of Goias.

Backgrounder Part I: Land Reform in Brazil
Manuel Domingos, Federal University of Ceara
February 03, 2003 - In January of 2001, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced that land concentration in Brazil had diminished and that a truly democratic, peaceful, and productive revolution had begun in the countryside. Even if the President’s statistics were correct, the number of settlers is less than the number of workers that abandoned their plots in search of better living conditions.

Two Models of Land Reform and Development
Jeffrey Frank, Z Magazine
November 27, 2002 - Guided by the slogan "Occupy, Resist and Produce," the MST initiated a direct action model of land reform
wherein landless peasants occupy an unproductive parcel
of land, petition the Brazilian government for land
rights, and operate the settlement as a collective
enterprise.

Land Research Action Network: Sponsoring Organizations
November 07, 2002 - Land Research Action Network's sponsoring organizations.