Topical News Lessons
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Working the land to feed
the people Brazil is one of the world's biggest producers of food but a third of the population is hungry. The govern- ments of the rich countries and the big corporations say that the only solution to this problem is to have free markets and to develop geneti- cally modified food (GM food). But so far this sort of globalisation has only produced more hunger, not less. In Brazil, however, there is a political movement that has a differ- ent solution. The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Te r r a (MST) - the Landless Rural Workers Movement – is now one of Brazil's biggest popular movements. T h e MST wants to give power to the poor people of Brazil through land reform and education. The MST takes direct action – it occupies large farms and organises demon- strations in big cities. Many poor Brazilian families are no longer hungry thanks to the work of the MST. Twenty years ago there was a secret war in the vast interior of Brazil. The war was not a fair one – it was between poor farmers and rich and powerful landowners. Because of this war almost 5 million people lost their homes in the three southern states of Brazil alone. They became sem terra - or landless. They had two choices: to move to the shanty towns of the big cities or to migrate thousands of kilometres north to the government colonies in the Amazon, far from roads, schools and hospitals. Many people who opposed this policy were murdered. Between 1981 and 1984 alone 277 peasant leaders, union officials and rural workers were killed. The MST was born in this climate of violence. Poor families had nothing left to lose so they began to occupy the farms of absentee landowners. It wasn’t easy. At first the families tried to copy the big farmers - plant- ing cash crops instead of food. They used fertilisers and pesticides to try and produce bigger and bigger har- vests. But it did not work. Families spent more and more money on pesticides and fertilisers. T h e y became ill from the side effects of the chemicals. The soil was exhaust- ed. Slowly the families began to use more traditional ways of farming and went back to growing their own food. They believe that chemical farming has no future because it exhausts the soil so rapidly. Families have now begun to remem- ber the way their parents and grand- parents used to farm. The Brazilian government's reform programme gave land to 260,000 families, but in the same period (1995-99) more than 1 million small farmers lost their land because of the pressure of the market. Only the big exporters of soyabeans, coffee, orange juice and poultry and the multinational companies have been successful. If the battle against GM foods is lost, the big biotech compa- nies, led by Monsanto, will domi- nate farming by controlling the seed companies. There is no place for small family farms in this situation, unless they are willing to grow seeds for Monsanto. The MST believes that it can confront these forces and win the battle. But the result is still uncertain. If they lose the battle, it will be a revolution that never hap- pened but if they win, they might bring greater equality and less hunger. The Guardian We e k l y 4 - 7 - 2 0 0 2 , page 22 |