24 August 2011 | News | Food Sovereignty
Brazil mobilizes
Peasants mobilize in 17 Brazilian states to demand agrarian reform
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Nearly 4,000 peasants of 23 Brazilian states and of the federal district set up the National Camp for the Agrarian Reform in the country’s capital Brasilia. The following day the rural workers occupied the headquarters of the Ministry of Economy in that city.
The camp, set up near Nilson Nelson’s gym will stay there for indefinite time. The actions are part of a National Day of Struggle for the Agrarian Reform of La Via Campesina Brazil, which has been holding several demonstrations in 17 states of the country since Monday.
The main demands of La Via Campesina Brazil are the settlement of over 60,000 families of the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) that were living in camp sites in the country, as well as the renegotiation of the debts of small farmers and the increase of the government’s budget allocated to the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA).
According to the MST, the INCRA funds for the expropriation of unproductive land and its allocation to rural workers in 2011 were already used and a cut of nearly 37 million US dollars is expected for the coming year.
Some families of rural workers’ have been camping in Brazil waiting to be settled for over five years, peasant Jose Batista de Oliveira told Adital news agency. He is a member of the MST national coordination and of La Via Campesina. The rural workers demand a program for the expropriation of large unproductive plots of land and a guarantee of an efficient settlement plan.
The agrarian reform “is one of the main means of development for our country because it democratizes land, it creates direct jobs, housing and food production thus overcoming the extreme poverty in the countryside and depopulation in the urban areas”, said Batista. “A serious agrarian reform program would enable the people in the rural areas access to health care, education, recreation, technology, communications and infrastructure”, all needs that are not met today.
Meanwhile, economist and MST leader Joao Pedro Stedile, said Monday at the camp in Brasilia that “85% of the lands in Brazil are used nowadays only to produce sugar cane, corn, soy and for cattle farming. The peasants only keep 15 % of the lands to feed the people because those four products are all for export”, he said in an interview published by MST.
Photo: MST
