DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Agrarian Reform Requires New Economic Model

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 1 1999 (IPS) - True agrarian reform in Brazil requires radical economic changes and a broad rural vision that is not limited to agriculture alone, say experts and the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST – Landless Movement).

Under the current economic philosophy it is useless to distribute land because there is no one to consume the additional agricultural output, said Joao Pedro Stédile, director of MST. But 32 million people suffer from hunger in Brazil.

Several surveys show that land ownership and income in Brazil continue to be concentrated in the hands of a few, says Stédile, but the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso boasts it has settled more peasant farmers than any previous government: 287,000 families from 1995 to 1998.

The rural leader maintains that the settlements are widely dispersed, and that they were created in response to pressures by “people who rebel, occupy lands and set up camp.” But the settlements have not changed the nation’s economic and social reality.

The “classic” agrarian reform, which MST defends, involves the massive distribution of lands, multiplying the number of farmers who, with their new incomes, would become consumers of industrial products.

That is how to promote the growth of the capitalist economy, Stédile told a meeting of Latin American economists. Contrary to the current model that pushes people out of rural areas and into the unemployment of the cities, we must “turn the development of the internal market upside down.”

But a successful agrarian reform that goes against the existing political economy is impossible, agreed two economists at the conference, José Graziano da Silva, of the University of Campinas (near Sao Paolo), and Roberto Escalante, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Brazil produces and exports an enormous quantity of agricultural products, observed Graziano de Silva. “If there is hunger it is not due to limited supply, but limited demand because the population lacks sufficient income.”

Poverty rates in Brazil are highest in rural areas, where unemployment continues to rise. Graziano de Silva pointed out that the agricultural sector is systematically losing profits despite increased production, because the prices of some products have fallen by as much as 70 percent over the last 30 years.

To change this situation it is essential to recognise that rural Brazil, as in other countries, is no longer home to agricultural production only, he said. It has become an entertainment area, with hotels, agro-tourism, crafts workshops and various services.

In some areas, such as Sao Paulo state, income from such activity is already more than the profits coming from traditional agriculture. For the country as a whole, it is estimated that its portion reaches 30 percent, and continues growing.

Graziano de Silva maintained that agrarian reform “cannot be just agricultural, it has to be rural,” and therefore must promote other sources of income to raise living standards in rural areas.

This is a vision that Brazil’s Ministry of Agricultural Policy included in a programme it launched this year, known as “The New Rural World.”

The plan promotes an “integrated development policy” for the rural areas, with a focus on family farming, explained Raul Jungmann, the agricultural policy minister.

In addition to the new range of rural activities, the plan seeks to settle peasant farmers in promising areas, avoiding regions that are already suffering economically because it would condemn the project to failure.

But the new project greatly reduced the number of settlements, as well as susidies for setting up operation and the first year’s planting, criticised Stédile.

Agrarian reform is for workers who are very poor and lack conditions to compete in the market, he stated.

The Brazilian process faces problems similar to the several failed agrarian reforms attempted throughout Latin America. In general, they did not resolve the concentration of land in the hands of a few, nor rural poverty, stated Escalante.

The Mexican researcher explained that such attempts gave little attention to the “social capital of the peasant farmers,” especially their education and training. They also failed to accompany the process with solutions for the economy in general.