2023-05-15 00:57:10
The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) is the victim of a sordid campaign of persecution by landowners. The “ruralist” bench [de terratenientes] of the National Congress prepares a Parliamentary Commission of Investigation (CPI) against the movement. It is an attack by the latifundio against the movement, but it affects all the movements that fight for agrarian reform, the indigenous peoples, quilombolas and peasants. Fighting is right, it is not a crime. The MST fights for agrarian reform and for peasant agriculture. Those who should be investigated are the representatives of agribusiness. They are the ones who commit crimes, spread violence with their bandits, and steal land from small holders through fraud and land grabbing. [grilagem]. Many are in Congress approving laws in favor of land theft, against indigenous and quilombola populations, and the environment.
By: Jeferson Choma
Attacks also come from ministers
And, once again, the landowners continue to occupy the ministries of a PT government, and from there they attack the movement, as did the Minister of Agriculture, soybean farmer Carlos Fávaro (PSD). Fávaro made a strange comparison of the actions of the MST during the Red April with the coup acts of the Bolsonaristas on January 8. He also made it clear that he supports the ICC.
“The National Congress has the prerogative of setting up a parliamentary commission of inquiry to investigate when it considers that there is something wrong in society.”, he stated on April 27.
The soy minister’s statements must be vehemently repudiated. The minister is responsible for authorizing the release of 166 agrotoxic products until April 30. He is an ally of the rural bench and supports the demands of agribusiness.
PT ministers also attacked the landless, such as Alexandre Padilha, from Institutional Relations and Paulo Teixeira, from Agrarian Development, who threatened the movement saying that “the vacating of lands invaded in recent days is a condition for the government to continue with the agrarian reform program.
Defender el MST
It is necessary to defend the MST and all the rural movements from the attacks of the ruralistas and from land occupations, as a legitimate instrument of pressure for agrarian reform. By the way, the existing settlements today were conquered with this method of fighting. It is necessary to investigate and punish the crimes of agribusiness, these true land invaders. Agriculture must be nationalized and placed under the control of the workers.
MST leadership needs to break with the government
In 2002, Lula said that he would carry out the agrarian reform “with one stroke of the pen”. But the PT ruled for 14 years with agriculture and did very little for the landless, who continued to be targets of landlord violence. You cannot treat this government as an ally or say that Carlos Fávaro is a “serious man”, as João Pedro Stédile, leader of the MST, put it.
We alert the MST activists: this government is not “ours”. The MST leadership needs to break ties with the government so that the landless can fight, defeat agriculture and win agrarian reform and the necessary economic support for the thousands of peasants.
Neocolonial: Brazilian agribusiness is an expression of the country’s economic decline
Agribusiness is an expression of Brazilian decadence, of the economic reprimarization of the country that causes deindustrialization and turns Brazil into a mere exporter of raw, mineral, and agricultural materials.
Since 1980, the reduction in the participation of the industrial sector in the formation of the Brazilian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been brutal. In 1985, industry represented 47.9% of GDP; in 2013, 24.8%; and in 2019, 22%. Agribusiness represented 47.6% of the total exported by Brazil in 2022.
In 2020, approximately 60% of Brazilian soybeans were purchased by China, which, in return, provided us with industrialized products, such as masks and respirators, that we were unable to manufacture domestically during the pandemic.
Lula never hid that he supports agribusiness. In a 2010 speech at a graduation ceremony for new diplomats, she stated that “basic products [commodities] with are becoming more valuable than the so-called manufactured products”. Now, in his third term, Lula continues to defend the sector. At the 27th edition of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, COP-27, Lula even said that “agribusiness will be a strategic ally in the search for regenerative and sustainable agriculture.” The problem, however, is that defending a sustainable agribusiness is unsustainable, due to the very nature of this agricultural model.
Agriculture is land theft and violence
Most of the large agribusiness “producers” have appropriated public lands, especially in the Amazon biome and in the Cerrado. In Brazil, there are several types of public lands. The lands on which an owner is not officially registered are a type of public land that is not identified, it is not known where it is and, therefore, it is not even included in the public patrimony. These add up to around 141.5 million hectares and are preferred by agricultural thieves, who register them fraudulently in some corrupt Property Registry Office. This process is known as land grabbing.
Another modality is federal and state lands, around 263 million hectares (approximately 30% of the national territory), which are divided between Indigenous Lands and Reserves, Quilombolas, and Conservation Units. These modalities are also the target of landowners, who invade Indigenous Lands, national parks, cause fires, deforest, and hire gunmen to expel indigenous people and peasants.
After “cleaning the land”, they hope for a government that allows them to legalize land theft, as happened with the approval of Law 11,952 during the Lula government in 2009. That law allowed the issuance of property titles for public areas in the Amazon, illegally occupied and deforested until December 2004, in areas of up to 1,500 hectares. The same happened with the Provisional Measure [MP] 759, in the government of Michel Temer, which increased the area eligible for regularization to 2,500 hectares and legalized the appropriation of invaded public lands until December 2011.
Agriculture is fire and deforestation
A survey of the area burned by fire in Brazil shows that, between 1985 and 2022, 185.7 million hectares were burned, which is equivalent to 21.8% of the national territory. This extension is comparable to the sum of Colombia and Chile, according to data from MapBiomas.
The Cerrado and the Amazon concentrated around 86% of the burned area in Brazil. It is important to remember that even under Lula, deforestation in the Amazon tripled by March 2023, with almost the equivalent of 1,000 soccer fields destroyed per day.
The Cerrado, on average, had an area burned each year larger than Scotland. In the case of the Amazon, it was almost one Ireland per year (6.8 million hectares). But the leadership belongs to the Pantanal, which had 51% of its territory consumed by fire during this period. This biome suffers the invasion of agriculture and had the largest fire ever recorded in Brazil.
Agriculture is also drought. More than 70% of the water consumed in Brazil is used in agriculture. In 30 years, the country has lost 1.5 million hectares of water surface, according to data from MapBiomas. Only in the Pantanal, the loss of water surface was 81.7%.
agriculture is hunger
But, how to produce food without the agriculture that the country carries on its back? This is the colossal lie, repeated daily by the media, by the farmers and by Lula. A true agribusiness mantra.
The truth is that agribusiness does not produce any food. On the contrary, it represents a threat to the country’s food security. Just to keep the feijão [frijoles, porotos] and rice, let’s look at the data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Since 2006, the area planted to rice in the country has been reduced by almost half (-44%); while that of beans contracted 32%. In the same period, that of soybeans almost doubled (+86%), while that of corn advanced 66%, two of the commodities most important sold in the international market.
It is peasant agriculture that guarantees a good part of the rice and beans to supply the Brazilian market. It is responsible for producing 70% of the food consumed throughout the country. According to the 2006 Agricultural Census, the sector produces 87% of cassava [yuca], 70% beans, 46% corn, 38% coffee, 34% rice and 21% wheat from Brazil. In livestock, it is responsible for 60% of milk production, in addition to 59% of the pig herd, 50% of poultry farming and 30% of the country’s cattle. That’s the data, that’s the reality.
Agriculture is slave labor
Agriculture is the example of the uneven and combined development of the process of expansion of capitalism in Brazil. Agribusiness combines the finest technology of so-called precision agriculture with the old agrarian concentration, violence, employing few people and even using modern slave labor.
The growth of agriculture promoted slave labor in the country. According to the Ministry of Labor, between 2003 and 2014 agribusiness was the absolute champion in the use of slave labor, with practically 80% of workers released.
We not only have “slaves to wine”, as is the case of the wineries of Rio Grande do Sul, but also to wood, meat, soybeans, cotton, coffee, orange juice, mate, etc. sisal, sugar…
Agriculture is banked with public money
According to the report published by Oxfam, 4,013 owners owe almost R$ 1 billion. A select group of 729 owners has a debt of R$ 200 billion. Debt of this class is always pushed with the belly [hacia adelante] by the governments of the day. The Temer government, for example, issued MP 733 for landowners to pay off the debt with bonds between 60% and 95%.
Agriculture is poison on your table
During the Bolsonaro administration, Brazil approved the use of 2,170 new pesticides. Since January of this year, 166 more have been released. Of the previously approved products, 1,056, the equivalent of 49% of the total, are banned in the European Union. In other words, we are becoming a repository for chemical waste from the big companies that make those products.
The increase in pesticides directly accompanies the expansion of crops of commodities. According to Larissa Mies Bombardi, professor of Geography at the University of São Paulo (USP), while the soybean cultivation area increased 53.95% between 2010 and 2019, the use of pesticides grew 71.46% in the same period. The researcher points out that the area cultivated with soybeans in Brazil is equivalent to the entire territory of Germany.
The struggle for land, and agribusiness
The struggle for land in Brazil requires three fundamental tasks. The first of these is to support the fight for a radical agrarian reform, under workers’ control. Likewise, it is necessary to advance in the demarcation of all Indigenous Lands and in the ownership of the quilombola territories. The second task is the nationalization of agribusiness, without compensating the landowners and completely revolutionizing the country’s agricultural model. In addition, a complete transformation is needed in the policy of granting credit and, consequently, in the financial structure of the nation. Without this, it becomes unfeasible to provide the small producer with the necessary conditions for production. Without nationalizing agribusiness, from large production to large commercial chains, it will be impossible to bring the product of the small producer to the cities.
This program is what the peasants, quilombolas and indigenous people need, as well as the workers and the majority of the people in the cities. But that is far from the objectives of the Lula government, which continues to rule for agribusiness.
Article published in www.pstu.org.br10/5/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.
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