DEVELOPMENT: Brazil Challenges EU on Agrarian reform

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 17 1997 (IPS) - Brazil is pressing the European Union to assist agrarian reform in Brazil by lowering tariffs for Brazilian products and increasing imports from rural areas here.

The idea is to create a “seal of solidarity” to identify goods produced by peasants living on small, endangered farms in order to include them in the General System of Preferences that the EU grants certain imports from poor countries in Africa and the Caribbean.

It was first mooted early this year, during a visit to Italy by Brazilian President Henrique Cardoso and this week was put to the European Commission in Brussels, and to members of the European Parliament, by the president of Brazil’s National Institute of Land Settlements and Agrarian Reform, Milton Seligman.

Cardoso, had been unhappy with a document signed by several European leaders that demanded more agrarian reform in Brazil, and has stated a more effective form of support for Brazilian peasants would be to open the European market to agricultural imports and end local farm subsidies.

The Brazilian government was also miffed at the prize given this year by the King Baudouin Foundation of Belgium to the Movement of Landless Workers (MST), fighting land reform in Brazil.

Privileged access to the European market would solve the Brazilian agrarian problem by increasing the economic viability of small farms, said Pedro Camargo Neto, director of the Brazilian Rural Society in comments printed Thursday in the newspaper Gazeta Mercantil.

The Rural Society appears to be linked to huge plantations, which are generally opposed to agrarian reform. Camargo Neto criticized European protectionism, noting that a study released recently predicts an 88.76 percent growth in Brazilian grain exports to Europe if the barriers are eliminated.

The mechanism is identical to other European support programs for local farmers, said Gazeta Mercantil. In addition, it has already been used to support 1,500 families in southern Chile, allowing them to use tariff waivers to export to Europe, especially Germany.

But the idea doesn’t fit into the General System on Preferences of the EU because it is limited to just one country, discriminating against others, and because Brazil was excluded from the system because of its relatively high level of development, the newspaper quoted EU sources as saying.

The advantage for the peasants will depend on whether they are taken into account in the “special regimen of incentives” that the EU will include in its System of Preferences, starting in 1998, to support the importation of wood products grown in renewable forests and products produced without child labor, among other examples.

Francisco Dal Chiavon, one of 48 national coordinators of MST told IPS that his movement is interested in the success of the initiative, as well as supporting “any measure that would improve the quality of life for small farmers.”

The MST has studied various alternatives to increase exports from small farms, said Dal Chiavon, who is also president of the Confederation of Agrarian Reform Cooperatives in Brazil, a union of peasant growers who have already obtained some land.

The non-governmental organizations that support agrarian reform or that stimulate the consumption of organic foods are some of the ways to create openings in foreign markets and increase the competitiveness of small peasant farmers.

Mate tea (one that is widely used in southern Brazil and neighboring countries) fruit, medicinal plants and cashew nuts are some of the exportable products and increasingly harvested in small farms and cooperatives.

Coffee production is also increasing, because of growers in the state of Espiritu Santo, in the eastern-central part of Brazil, who want to begin exporting their crops. (FIN/IPS/mo/dg/ip- if/dtk/97)