By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAULO, Dec 2 2003 (IPS)

On November 21, Brazilian president Lula announced a programme of agrarian reform that will settle 400,000 peasant families by the end of his term in 2006, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil and member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. The government did not consider a more ambitious plan that would have settled a million families in the same period. However, Stedile argues in this article, the definition of goals and numbers it is less important than knowing whether the government will make agrarian reform a priority. We believe that the Lula administration should redefine its priorities: first, it should cease it preoccupation with making interest payments on the national debt and generating a budget surplus. Instead its priority must be to use public funds to solve social problems. If it doesn\’t the people will begin to protest and mobilise against the administration. There is a limit to patience, especially when people are hungry. Now it is Lula\’s turn. The President knows all too well that if he doesn\’t implement a broad programme of agrarian reform, his government will founder.

The government did not consider the more ambitious plan of a team lead by Professor Plinio Arruda Sampaio, which would have settled a million families in the same period.

We think that the definition of goals and numbers it is less important than knowing whether the government will make agrarian reform a priority. If it does, it is up to the government to decide how it will reach its goal. The problem of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) and advocates of land reform is organising people to pressure the government to settle the largest number of workers so that they can begin to produce and lift themselves out of poverty as soon as possible.

We believe that the Lula administration should redefine its priorities: first, it should cease it preoccupation with making interest payments on the national debt and generating a budget surplus. Instead its priority must be to use public funds to solve social problems. If it doesn’t the people will begin to protest and mobilise against the administration. There is a limit to patience, especially when people are hungry.

But if the government begins a programme of massive and rapid agrarian reform, the workers will back him and work to make sure that the project is fulfilled.

The Lula administration has an historic opportunity to bring about real land reform in a country that has failed numerous times to do so.

In the colonial era land ownership was the monopoly of the monarchy, which granted concessions in the form of large estates to the privileged, who used slave labour and produced for export.

The end of slavery provided an excellent but missed opportunity to democratise land ownership and give blacks not only formal freedom but the freedom to become farmers.

A second opportunity was presented with the adoption of dependent industrialisation (1930-1980). All modern industrialised economies were based on a strong domestic market built through the redistribution of income and agrarian reform, which incorporated millions of farmers into the market. The elite Brazilians, however, preferred a form of industrialisation that was dependent on foreign capital and oriented towards a small segment of the population. To this end, they wrought an alliance with the rural oligarchy, which kept the land concentrated in the hands of a few producing for export. As a result, the consumer market today comprises less than 20 percent of Brazil’s population.

This model reached its first crisis in the 1960s, when the government of Joao Goulart proposed as an alternative the development of a domestic market, policies to spur the redistribution of income, and agrarian reform. The elites, however, preferred to ally themselves with US capitalism and imposed a military dictatorship.

In the 1980s, when the model of dependent industrialisation entered a terminal crisis, the Brazilian elites opted to subordinate themselves to international (now financial) capital, and were deceived again. Twelve years of continuous neoliberal policy was not able to remedy the country’s economic crisis, while the social situation got worse.

The people eventually took revenge and voted against neoliberalism, electing Lula.

Now the neoliberal faithful are pretending that Brazilian agriculture is modern and is saving the national economy. This is pure propaganda. Grain production has increased in twelve years from 80 to 100 million tonnes — this hardly counts as development.

Brazil has approximately 350 million hectares of arable land, yet a mere 50 million hectares, or 15 percent, is actually cultivated, and this percentage has remained unchanged for twenty years.

The neoliberal agricultural model only deepened the country’s dependency on foreign markets. Of Brazil’s 34 principal agricultural products, only for three were planting and production increased: sugar, soy, and corn. All others in fact were reduced. Meanwhile Brazil has among the highest hunger indices in the world, with 44 million of the country’s 177 million people suffering from hunger and malnourishment, and another 60 million consuming less than they need.

What neoliberalism has generated is the growth of a sector of production dedicated to exports –particularly soy and sugar– to the detriment of the general population and small farmers. All social indicators have fallen, unemployment has risen, as land ownership has grown increasingly concentrated.

The neoliberal model applied by the governments of Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique Cardoso favoured a sector of about 400,000 landowners –as opposed to the 23 million rural workers– and transnational companies that control grain trade and the agroindustry and which now want to take over the sale of seed through the introduction of transgenic varieties.

Now it is Lula’s turn. The President knows all too well that if he doesn’t implement a broad programme of agrarian reform, his government will founder. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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