THE NEW GEOPOLITICS OF HUNGER

In the 1960s about 80 million people suffered from hunger worldwide. In this period global capitalism was peaking and transnational companies were expanding throughout the planet, dominating markets and exploiting cheap labour and the natural resources of peripheral countries, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, a member of the Landless Farmers Movement (MST) and of Via Campesina Brazil. This was the world into which the Green Revolution was born, with its promise to end hunger. Its mentor, Normal Borlaug, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The real objective was to introduce a new system of agricultural production based on the intensive use of industrial inputs. Productivity per hectare increased and world production quadrupled. And yet the number of people suffering from hunger grew far faster, from 80 to 800 million. Today, prices of agricultural products around the world are no longer tied to production costs or even to supply and demand. Instead, they swing rapidly in response to market speculation and transnational corporations\' control of the international food markets. Meanwhile the number of people suffering from hunger rose in the last two years from 800 to 925 million.

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY FOR LATIN AMERICA

Almost the entire western world is at the mercy of agroindustrial capitalism, a system of depredation that does not respect nature, produces food with high levels of toxins that makes its consumers sick, and is a cause of climate change and global warming, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, a member of the Landless Farmers Movement (MST) and of Via Campesina Brazil. In this article, Stedile writes that the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, in association with Via Campesina International, is pushing for various agreements that would end this dependence and create a path towards food sovereignty. The first step was reorganising the teaching of agronomy to focus on new approaches to the production of healthful foods, with agro-ecological techniques that do not use agro-toxins. In the spirit of Latin America integration that is the inspiration of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), Latin America is building the scientific foundations needed to find a way to achieve food sovereignty for our peoples.

Q&A: ‘The WSF Has to Agree On Common Actions Against Common Enemies’

Joao Pedro Stédile thinks that the World Social Forum (WSF) should remain a debating arena for civil society, because with all its breadth and variety, to attempt to agree on resolutions is "an illusion."

THE SINISTER NEW BIO-FUEL ALLIANCE

The Landless Movement of Brazil and the international organisation Via Campesina condemn the new initiative of President George Bush, who in his upcoming trip to Latin America hopes to seduce and co-opt the countries of the region into becoming major producers of bio-fuels for export to the US, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) and Via Campesina Brazil. In this article, Stedile writes that a diabolical alliance of the oil companies, the transnationals that control agricultural and GM seeds, and the automobile industry, in order to maintain the current consumerist model of the first world and its profit levels, are trying to convince the governments of the South to concentrate their agriculture in bio-fuel production to supply the cars of the first world. The new US plan would be a tragedy for tropical agriculture and would transform major areas of our best lands into monoculture tracts, aggravate the loss of biodiversity, and reduce the amount of land dedicated to food production, forcing millions of peasants around the world from their land and into the swelling slums of the big cities.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN BRAZIL ?

Brazil is undergoing a profound crisis, writes, Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the leaders of the Landless Movement (MST) and Via Campesina Brazil. In this article, Stedile writes that the Lula administration was wrong about everything. It did whatever the right wanted and nevertheless all of the sectors of the right are in the opposition and dedicated to its moral, political, and electoral defeat and to winning power in 2006. The left is in serious need of a profound self evaluation of its approach. It am not talking about corruption but rather the fact that the left has essentially abandoned the ideological struggle for the illusion of governing. It traded voluntary activism for paid employment as functionaries. It abandoned a plan of social change for the vanity of being in power. Perhaps in a collective self-delusion, many convinced themselves that class struggle had been superseded by competition between corporate bodies in which the most expert would prevail. Brazil\'s social movements are working from the assumption that the real way forward is neither the government nor elections but instead the creation of popular force and a grass-roots organisation to generate in the medium term a true mass movement.

BRAZIL: LULA STUCK IN NEOLIBERAL TRAP

The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been in power almost two years old now, and yet, intimidated by threats of speculation and every sort of blackmail, it has lamentably maintained an economic policy based on the same neoliberal precepts subscribed to by the previous government, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, national co-ordinator of the Movement of the Landless (MST) and a leader of Via Campesina. In this analysis, Stedile writes that the government\'s priority is the performance of financial capital, to which it transfers the nation\'s savings by running the budget surpluses advised by the International Monetary Fund in order to make payments on its debt. The results are predictable. The economy grew but there was no improvement in employment and education or in land and income distribution. The problem is that Brazil desperately needs to hold a debate on the creation of a new development plan. As long as there is no such plan for national development, the Lula administration will shuttle between growth and crisis, formulating short-term measures that time will quickly sweep away.

WILL LULA MAKE LAND REFORM A PRIORITY?

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 Offensive of the Empire

The leader of Brazil's landless movement, known by its initials MST, offers his views of the World Social Forum, which gets under way this week in Porto Alegre.

THE OFFENSIVE OF THE EMPIRE AND THE REACTION OF THE PEOPLES

The upcoming Third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will take place in a world marked by growing militarisation, a military-economic offensive by the US, and servility on the part of the international organisations. The consequences of this for all humanity are tragic, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Movement of the Landless (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil and Member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. In this article for IPS, Stedile writes that the objectives of the US and its business class are clear: to maintain their imperial power at any cost. They want to find a way out of the capitalist crisis, shifting its costs onto the peoples of the Third World,and monopolize access to energy sources and restore profit levels. The US also wants to push through a Free Trade Area of the Americas, with which they could obtain comparative advantages that would help them emerge faster from the current crisis and be better positioned to face their competitors in Europe and Asia. Fortunately the people are waking up. A powerful and unified continent-wide movement against the FTAA is gathering strength. Recent elections in the region have gone decidedly against liberalism and US proposals. This was the case in Ecuador,Brazil,and Bolivia and will be so in Argentina and Uruguay this year.