Raimundo Pinheiro de Melo, better known as Mundinho, a 76-year-old farmer who lives in the Apodi municipality in Northeast Brazil, shows a visiting farmer a bottle of bean seeds which he stores and protects. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
APODI, Brazil, Jan 6 2017 (IPS)

In his 76 years of life, Raimundo Pinheiro de Melo has endured a number of droughts in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast region. And he remembers every one of them since 1958.

“The worst one was in 1982 and 1983, the only time that the river dried up,” said Pinheiro do Melo, who has lived near the river since 1962. “The one in 1993 was also very bad,” he told IPS, because neither Bolsa Familia nor Networking in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Region (ASA) existed yet, which contribute to a less traumatic coexistence with droughts like the current one, which has dragged on for five years.

Bolsa Familia is a government cash-transfer programme which helps some 13.8 million poor families in Brazil, half of whom are in the Northeast. ASA is a network of 3,000 social organisations which promotes the collection of rainwater, as well as techniques and know-how suited to rural life in a climate of irregular rainfall.

Water is not so scarce for Pinheiro do Melo and his neighbours because of their proximity to the Apodi river, because even when it dries up, they can get water from the cacimbas, which are water holes in the riverbed or along the banks.

Mundinho, as he is known, besides making an effort to obtain water on the high-lying land where he lives in a rural area in the Apodi municipality, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, is dedicated to a task that is vital to the sustainability of small-scale farming in the semi-arid interior of Northeast Brazil, an ecosystem known as the Sertão. He is a “guardian” of native seeds.

In bottles and small plastic barrels, he stores the seeds of corn, bean, sorghum, watermelon and other locally planted species, in a shack next to his house, in the middle of land that is now sandy and covered with dried-up vegetation.

More than a thousand homes that serve as “seed banks”, and 20,000 participating families, make up the network organised by ASA to preserve the genetic heritage and diversity of crops adapted to the climate and semi-arid soil in Brazil’s Northeast.

Saving seeds is an age-old peasant tradition, which was neglected during the “green revolution”, a period of agricultural modernisation which started in the mid-20th century and involved “an offensive by companies that produced the so-called ‘improved’ seeds,” which farmers became dependent on, said Antonio Gomes Barbosa, a sociologist who is coordinator of ASA’s Seed Programme.

Native seeds stored in recycled plastic bottles, in a shack on his farm specially built by Raimundo Pinheiro de Melo, who proudly guards native seeds that contribute to food security in Northeast Brazil, in the midst of a drought that has dragged on for over five years. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The strategy, adopted in 2007, of disseminating technologies for harvesting rainwater for production, in search of food security, lead ASA to the awareness that small producers needed to always have seeds available, he told IPS.

A study carried out among 12,800 families found that “the semi-arid Northeast has the greatest variety of seeds of food and medicinal plant species in Brazil.” Of the 56 million people who live in the Northeast, more than 23 million live in the semi-arid parts of the region, in this South American country of 208 million.

According to the survey, the family and community tradition of storing seeds and passing them down from one generation to the next contributed to this diversity of seeds, as did migrants who returned to the semi-arid Northeast from southern São Paulo and east-central Brazil, bringing seeds native to those areas.

What ASA did was to identify the houses which had stored seeds, create a network of them and help multiply the number of these traditional seed banks, in order to salvage, preserve, increase stocks and distribute native seeds, Barbosa said.

Antonia de Souza Oliveira, or Antonieta as she is known, participates in seed bank number 639, according to ASA’s records, in Milagre, a village of 28 families on the Apodi plateau, which is crossed by the river of the same name.

The community seed bank “has 17 guardians and stocks mainly of corn, bean and sorghum seeds,” she said.

Antonia de Souza Oliveira in front of the seed bank in Milagre, a rural settlement of 28 families in the state of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil, which has become famous for the strong participation of women in the village’s collective activities. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The strong presence of women in the activities in this community prompted former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) to choose Milagre to inaugurate a line of credit for women participating in the National Programme to Strengthen Family Farming (PRONAF).

A model case, highlighted by ASA, is the seed bank in Tabuleiro Grande, another rural settlement in the municipality of Apodi, in Rio Grande do Norte. There, a family initiative stores seeds of 450 varieties of corn, beans and other legumes and herbs.

Antonio Rodrigues do Rosario, 59, heads the fourth generation that maintains the “family bank”.

The native seed movement is in conflict with the green revolution, where seeds are distributed by the government or are sold by biotech corporations “in great quantities but with little variety,” said Barbosa.

“We don’t need this kind of distribution, just local initiatives in every area to rescue local seeds, with great diversity and dissemination,” said Barbosa.

The movement is about knowledge accumulated by local families with experience in adaptation to each specific place, soil and climate, based on the intended type of production and resistance to pests and drought.

Antonio Gomes Barbosa, coordinator of the Native Seeds Programme of the movement Networking in the Brazilian Semi Arid, which brings together more than 3,000 organisations. This initiative is key to food security and biodiversity in agriculture in Northeast Brazil, especially during the prolonged drought currently plaguing the region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“There are many varieties of corn that address different needs; you can produce more leaves to feed animals, or more corn for human consumption,” he said.

“Family gardens are laboratories, where experiments are carried out, genetic improvements and testing of resistance and productivity of seeds. The garden is where women participate the most, teaching their children as well,” Barbosa said.

“In the severe 1982-1983 drought, a variety of fast-growing potato, which in 60 days was reproduced and stored by a grandmother, saved many lives,” he said.

The exchange of materials and knowledge within and among communities is also an important part of maintaining the diversity of native seeds. ASA works to bolster this exchange, promoting contact among small farmers from different areas.

“Native seeds are at the centre of resistance to the impositions of the market, in order to overcome the dependence on big suppliers,” said Barbosa.

Climate change boosts the importance of native seeds from the semi-arid region. “There is no agricultural poison to combat the rise in temperatures,” he said, half-jokingly.

The Semi-Arid Seeds Programme proved the “great creative capacity and ability to experiment of family farmers in the Northeast,” Barbosa told IPS in the nearby municipality of Mossoró.

It also showed their tendency towards autonomy. “Farmers follow their own experience, more than the advice of agronomists, because they always choose the safest bet.”

But there are two threats that concern ASA’s seed movement. One is the “genetic erosion” which could be caused by the current drought, which in some areas has lasted for seven years.

Isolated rains tempt farmers to plant. Knowing they could lose their entire crop, they never use all of their seeds. But the seeds are gradually lost, with each deceptive rainfall, which puts their entire stock of seeds at risk.

Another threat is posed by transgenic seeds, which farmers involved in ASA reject. The presence of genetically modified corn was detected in some crops in the northeastern state of Paraíba, apparently a consequence of contamination from seeds brought in from other regions.

The Sauce port industrial complex in the state of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil, where some 200 companies from different sectors will operate. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 8 2014 (IPS)

“If I had to choose today I would stay back home, I wouldn’t come to look for work here,” said Josefa Gomes, who 30 years ago moved from Serra Redonda, a small town in Brazil’s semiarid northeast, to the city of Rio de Janeiro, 2,400 km away.

She reached that conclusion as a result of the changes she has seen in her hometown, population 7,000, during visits to her family in recent years. “Everything has changed, now people have electricity, there’s work in the flour mills, shoe factories, or farming cooperatives,” she told IPS.

Besides, thanks to paved roads and buses that pass frequently, it only takes 40 minutes to reach Campina Grande, a city of around 400,000, from her town. “It used to take over an hour,” she said.

The economy of the northeast, Brazil’s poorest region, has been growing since the past decade at a pace much higher than the national average, which has been nearly stagnant since 2012, due to the slowdown in the traditional motor of the economy: the south.The northeast is enjoying strong economic growth that has reduced the gap with the most developed part of the country, the south and southeast. The progress made and the expectations of further advances strengthened regional support for Rousseff.

The southern state of São Paulo is in recession. Its industrial output accounted for over 31 percent of the national total in 2011, compared to 38 percent 10 years earlier, according to an Oct. 6 study by the National Industrial Confederation.

The 7.7 percentage points lost were distributed among other states, including the nine states of the northeast.

That trend has been exacerbated since last year by an industrial crisis whose epicentre is São Paulo. Brazil’s industrial production fell 2.9 percent in the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period in 2013.

The country’s industrial decentralisation, added to other factors, has reduced the economic inequality between Brazil’s regions, at the expense of the traditional industrial centres of this Latin American powerhouse of 200 million people.

The dichotomy in the economic geography fuelled the opposite behavior of voters in Brazil’s recent elections. President Dilma Rousseff was reelected with 71.7 percent of the vote in the northeast in the Oct. 27 runoff.

But her triumph was threatened by a broad opposition majority in São Paulo, where 64.3 percent of voters backed her rival, the pro-business Aécio Neves.

The electoral divide in Brazil tends to be attributed to the government’s social programmes, especially Bolsa Familia, which have pulled some 36 million Brazilians out of poverty during the governments of the left-wing Workers Party led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva since 2003 and Rousseff since 2011.

A rural settlement in the state of Pernambuco, in the northeast of Brazil, with tanks to collect and store rainwater and make it potable, which form part of the small community infrastructure projects that have mushroomed in the region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The northeast is enjoying strong economic growth that has reduced the gap with the most developed part of the country, the south and southeast. The progress made and the expectations of further advances strengthened regional support for Rousseff.

Bolsa Familia funnels some 440 million dollars a month to the northeast, where the monthly cash transfer is received by 6.5 million families – nearly half of the programme’s recipients nationwide.

But that is only one-sixth of what is received by the 8.8 million retirees and pensioners of the region, from the social security system, economist Cícero Péricles de Carvalho told IPS.

Moreover, of Brazil’s five geographic regions, the northeast generated the most formal sector jobs in the past few years. There are currently nearly nine million workers with contracts in the region – double the number at the start of the 21st century, he said.

“The number of formal sector jobs in the construction industry alone increased from 195,000 in 2003 to 650,000 today,” Carvalho said.

The greater number of formal sector jobs means better wages, which also rose thanks to the policy of increasing the minimum wage adopted by Lula and Rousseff, besides improved access to bank loans – all of which has driven up buying power and consumption.

“The additional income, also from scholarships and pensions, which doubled between 2003 and 2014, and the new jobs have fuelled demand tremendously, because the beneficiaries don’t save, they spend everything on consumption,” said Carvalho, a professor at the Federal University of Alagoas, a small state in the northeast.

The rise in consumption bolstered commerce, which has in turned driven the expansion of networks of supermarkets and new industries to meet the growing demand, like factories of construction materials, clothing and food.

Another reason for the expansion was the Growth Acceleration Programme, implemented since 2007 and consisting of a set of economic policies and investment and infrastructure projects ranging from small community endeavours to giant megaprojects like the diversion of the São Francisco river, which includes the construction of 700 km of channels and tunnels to carry water to 12 million people.

“That unexpected dynamic has generated economic development as well as social inclusion, with social gains that aren’t limited to income,” such as the increase in access to electricity through the programme “Light for all” or the expansion in health and education coverage, Carvalho said.

Nevertheless, living standards in the northeast are still far below the national average, and the difference has only been reduced slowly, also because the region’s economic growth has been concentrated in the coastal areas, he added.

Deindustrialisation

Brazil’s process of deindustrialisation has also affected the northeast, but to a lesser degree than in São Paulo and with better prospects for the future, another local economist, João Policarpo Lima of the Federal University of Pernambuco, told IPS.

There are large-scale projects that will accelerate industrial expansion when they come fully onstream, he said. They include a refinery, a petrochemical plant and the world’s biggest Fiat assembly plant, being built in the northeast state of Pernambuco, which has grown the most in the past few years.

Large companies have set up shop in two port-industrial complexes: Suape in Pernambuco, and Pecém in the neighbouring state of Ceará. Suape also attracted more than 100 companies, including a major shipyard and the biggest flour mill in Latin America, besides the refinery and petrochemical plant.

Meanwhile, in São Paulo the strong opposition vote and the vehement rejection of the Workers’ Party, Lula and Rousseff were connected to the economic losses.

In protests in the city of São Paulo before and after the elections, demonstrators chanted increasingly hate-filled slogans against the “nordestinos” for “selling” their vote in exchange for Bolsa Familia, which provides an average monthly stipend of 70 dollars.

The industrial setback was especially felt in the sugarcane industry, which produces sugar and ethanol and represents 80 percent of the agricultural economy of São Paulo, said businessman Maurilio Biagi Filho of Ribeirão Preto, a city known as the “sugarcane capital”.

“The sector is caught up in a serious crisis that has given rise to a sense of desperation and will take many years to overcome, even if measures are adopted to bring about a recovery,” he told IPS.

The business community and analysts blame the crisis on gasoline price controls implemented by Rousseff to curb inflation. Ethanol, the cost of which is rising, has been unable to compete with the subsidised fossil fuel prices.

The situation was aggravated with the drop in sugar prices since 2010 and this year’s drought, which led to water rationing in more than 130 towns and cities in the state of São Paulo.

Dozens of sugar mills went under or suspended production in the past few years, while many others accepted legal accords to avoid insolvency proceedings or were purchased by foreign corporations. An estimated 300,000 jobs were lost.

The magnitude of the crisis and the perception that it is largely due to the government “influenced voters (in São Paulo), especially in the interior,” Biagi concluded.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The Morro de Vidigal favela in Río de Janeiro. Credit: Agência Brasil/EBC

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 31 2014 (IPS)

Every day, Celina Maria de Souza rises before dawn, and after taking four of her children to the nearby school she climbs down the 180 steps that separate her home on a steep hill from the flat part of this Brazilian city, to go to her job as a domestic. In the evening she makes the long trek back up.

For 25 years, Souza has lived at the top of the Morro Vidigal favela or shantytown, located in the middle of one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro.

In this favela, home to some 10,000 people, the houses, many built by the families themselves, are squashed between the sea and a mountain.

Originally from Ubaitaba, a town in the northeast state of Bahia1,000 km north of Rio de Janeiro, Souza, 44, left her family when she was just 17 to follow her dream of a better life in the big city.

She was part of the decades-long massive wave of people fleeing drought in the impoverished Northeast to make a living in the more industrialised south.

“I’m tired of living in the favela,” she complained to IPS. “I dream of one day having a house with a room for each of my kids. I tell them to be responsible and to study so they won’t suffer later. I wish I could go back to school, but it’s hard for me to find the time.”

Souza, a mother of six children between the ages of 12 and 23 – the oldest two have moved out – has a monthly income of around 450 dollars a month.“This money helps me a lot. They criticise it, saying it’s charity, but I don’t see it like that. You have to work too. With the Bolsa money, I buy school supplies, food, and clothes and shoes for my children. It doesn’t cover everything, but it’s a huge help.” - Celina Maria de Souza

Nearly half of that comes from Bolsa Familia, a cash transfer programme created by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) when he first became president and continued by his successor Dilma Rousseff.

In 2013 Bolsa Familia reached its 10th anniversary as the leading social programme in this country of 200 million people.

It benefits 13.8 million families, equivalent to 50 million individuals – precisely the number of people who have been pulled out of extreme poverty over the last decade.

But 21.1 million Brazilians are still extremely poor, according to the latest official figures, from 2012.

The International Social Security Association (ISSA), based in Switzerland, granted a prize to Bolsa Familia in October for its contribution to the fight against poverty and support for the rights of the most vulnerable.

According to ISSA, it is the world’s largest cash transfer scheme, with a cost of just 0.5 percent of Brazil’s GDP. The programme’s 2013 budget was 10.7 billion dollars, and it is currently part of the Brasil Sem Miséria (Brazil Without Poverty) umbrella programme.

“I had heard of it and they told me it was a subsidy that the government gave kids who were enrolled in school and vaccinated regularly. We were really doing badly, we didn’t even have enough to eat,” Souza said.

For over a decade, her children have benefited from Bolsa Familia. The family initially received a total of just 40 dollars, but the amount has steadily increased. Souza, who has been married twice, has raised her children alone since breaking up with her second husband.

“This money helps me a lot,” she said. “They criticise it, saying it’s charity, but I don’t see it like that. You have to work too. With the Bolsa money, I buy school supplies, food, and clothes and shoes for my children. It doesn’t cover everything, but it’s a huge help.”

Souza hasn’t forgotten the days when she went hungry, or the occasional nights when she had no roof over her head – both she and her two older children, when she separated from her first husband. “I told my children: eat, because just seeing you get some food nourishes me,” she said. Now she and the four children still at home live in a crowded two-room house.

The residents of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, many of which are built on steep hillsides, climb up and down long stairways every day like this one in the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Souza, who had very little formal schooling, works mainly in the informal sector, although when she first came to the city she found a job in a women’s accessories factory. She is constantly battling poverty, and hopes that her children will have better opportunities.

She is one of the innumerable examples of Brazilians who are trying to improve the lives of their families, while this country attempts to revert years of neglect and a historical lag in human development.

Thanks to this effort, South America’s giant has moved up on the Human Development Index (HDI).

In the latest HDI report, released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Jul. 24, Brazil ranked 79 among the 187 countries covered.

But in Latin America, Brazil is behind Chile (41), Cuba (44), Argentina (49), Uruguay (50), Panama (65), Venezuela (67), Costa Rica (68) and Mexico (71).

Andréa Bolzon, coordinator of the Atlas of Human Development in Brazil, told IPS that the country has made significant progress in the last 20 years.

The Atlas draws up Brazil’s contribution to the Human Development Report, which includes the HDI. The theme of this year’s report was Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience.

Underlying the improvement, she said, “are policies that were implemented, like the increase in the minimum salary, affirmative action measures to reduce racial inequality, the boost to employment and Bolsa Familia itself.”

The HDI, created in 1980, is a measure derived from life expectancy, education levels and incomes. In 2013, life expectancy in Brazil averaged 73.9 years, schooling averaged 7.2 years, and gross national income per capita was 14,275 dollars.

Between 1980 and 2013, Brazil’s HDI value increased 36.4 percent. In 1980 life expectancy was 62.7 years, schooling averaged 2.6 years and GNI per capita was 9,154 dollars.

“Brazil is one of the countries whose human development has improved the most over the past 30 years,” said UNDP representative in Brazil Jorge Chediek during the presentation of the data in Brasilia.

But inequality is still a huge problem in Brazil, Bolzon said. “We have to invest in universal quality public systems, especially in health and education, because they have effects on other indicators.”

The increase in the years of schooling among families is precisely one visible change, she said.

“We see it from generation to generation in the same family,” she said. “People who studied very little have children who have more years of schooling; there is a big difference in terms of education.”

Souza and her family fit that pattern: she has a fifth grade education, while her 12-year-old daughter is in sixth grade today.

“I studied very little; I had to drop out when I was 12 to work, because I had to help my parents put food on the table,” said Souza. “I want my kids to have much more than I had – a good education and good jobs.”

Isis, her youngest daughter, knows all about the difficulties her mother has faced and the sacrifices she makes in order for them to have a better life. “I love going to school, and I love math. When I come home, I help my mom and I tidy up the house. My mom tells us to study a lot to have a better futrue. I know what her life has been like, and I do that,” she told IPS with a smile.

Santo Antônio hydropower station under construction, October 2010. Credit:Mario Osava/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Dec 13 2012 (IPS)

As governments struggle to find ways out of the persistent global financial crisis, Brazil’s development model offers an alternative path to recovery and growth, according to some economists and politicians.

“Brazil provides hope for African as well as European nations because Brazil has shown that you can succeed at globalisation by opting resolutely not only for growth but also for a better distribution of wealth,” Togolese economist Kako Nubukpo told IPS.

The former head of economic analysis and research for the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) was in Paris to participate in a two-day ‘Forum for Social Progress’ that took place here this week, headed by Brazil’s ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, current president Dilma Rousseff and French president François Hollande.

Focusing on how to ‘choose growth’ and ‘exit the crisis’, the forum was also a space for progressive experts to call for a new kind of global governance that “puts people first” and ensures environmental sustainability.

“Brazil has shown us that the challenge is to take people’s aspirations into account as much as possible, because with enlightened leadership we can win in the development process,” Nubukpo said.

“In Africa today we have the impression that our leaders are more accountable to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank than to their own people.”

Nubukpo and other participants praised the “usefulness” of the forum, but Lula himself said he was tired of meetings held simply to discuss the crisis. In a passionate speech, he called on governments to find the courage to adopt “obvious” solutions, especially regarding the poor.

“If a ruler cannot offer democracy, dignity and hope to his people, what do we need governments for?” he asked.

Describing how he embarked on plans to make Brazil a respected player on the world stage, Lula described policies that have been both lauded and criticised. His administration notably instituted the ‘bolsa familia’ (family grant) programme, a national system of cash transfers for poor families to assist them in keeping their children in school.

The government also set up a ‘pro-uni’ (pro-university) programme in which low-income students receive scholarships for university, with the aim of providing the country with more skilled workers.

Some critics say that the measures have had unintended consequences, such as families sending children to school just to get the funds, but Lula defended the policies.

“I had the conviction that it was necessary to do something different than what had been done (before) in Brazil,” he said at the forum, which was co-hosted by the French Jean-Jaurès Foundation and by the Instituto Lula, an organisation Lula founded after leaving the presidency in 2011.

“We decided to pay the bolsa familia through bank branches, (using) magnetic cards that were given to the women in each household (not to the men, who could go out and spend the money on beer) and…this was a revolution for building bank accounts for low-income brackets,” he added.

One of Instituto Lula’s goals is to “bring Brazil and Africa closer together” and to “improve Brazil’s integration with Latin America” – two objectives that the former president said would change the global status quo.

“It’s necessary to build new paradigms so that we can discuss trade issues and not be locked in the traditional gaze of looking to the United States or the European Union to solve our problems for us,” he said.

According to Lula, if industrialised countries did more for Africa, they would also reap benefits in the future. “Why doesn’t the developed world, which is facing a consumption problem, extend long-term funding to African countries at lower interest rates so that Africa can develop their own industries and agriculture?” he asked.

He said that the ocean between Latin America and Africa should be seen as a conduit for, rather than a barrier to, trade.

African anti-poverty activist Bruno Ondo Mintsa, president of the Association Printemps du Quart-Monde, told IPS that the “Brazilian miracle” was a source of motivation for Africans.

For Africa, which has immense natural wealth but continues to be plagued by abject poverty, “Brazil shows that the problem is one of democracy, of governance and wealth distribution,” Mintsa said. “It’s scandalous that such a rich continent as Africa should have people living in such poverty.”

For some European socialists, Brazil exemplifies a middle way between what French president Hollande called the “outright rejection of globalisation and the gullible acceptance of even its (most) extreme consequences”.

“Although we’re looking for growth, we know all too well that the kind of growth we had before the crisis is no longer sustainable,” Hollande told participants at the forum.

The solution will not be found by looking back, he added. Instead, “We have to create a new era.”

According to Hollande, the priorities have to be growth, jobs for young people, energy transition and fighting inequality. He is all too familiar with the perils of ignoring these key areas – French unemployment rose to 10.3 percent in the third quarter of this year, the highest in 13 years, and youth unemployment is close to 25 percent.

On Tuesday, just as the Forum for Social Progress began, the French government’s own National Conference for the Fight Against Poverty drew to a close with the announcement of an ambitious two-billion-euro plan for moving forward.

The roadmap includes increasing income support, extending free national healthcare, creating emergency housing and providing an allocation of funds for unemployed young people aged 18 to 25. Some opposition politicians criticised the plan as a handout, but activists said it was time real political attention was given to the poor.

“France can learn a lot from Brazil,” retired French medical doctor and professor Alain Goguel told IPS. “We prop up the banks with trillions, but re-launching the economy by helping the poor is an original idea. It should be imitated if it works.”

(END)