U.N. to Include Brazil’s Landless Workers in World Food Program
Target farmers struggle to produce
By Kenneth Rapoza
PARANAPOEMA, Brazil -- The World Food Program of the United Nations told Brazilian officials in mid-May that they would buy food from small, Brazilian farmers to distribute to hunger relief programs. The farmers are all former members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), the largest poor people’s movement in the Americas. James Morris, the Program’s director, said that buying food product from small producers, all of whom were seated on land expropriated by the Brazilian government through land reform policies, is a two-fold blessing because it will provide income power to rural workers who will ultimately be helping to eradicate hunger in poor countries.
“We are interested in the well being of small producers and want to buy from them whenever we can,” Morris was quoted as saying in Reuters on May 19. Morris said that product from these small farms will also be distributed to Program nations like Bolivia, Peru and Haiti.
There’s just one major problem. Many ex-MST farmers can barely produce food for themselves.
Still Struggling
By the U.N.’s own measurements, agrarian reform in Brazil has not lifted families out of poverty. That means, even though MST and similar groups have been given a tract of land to cultivate, most of them still barely earn the minimum wage.
A February 2003 report titled “Quality of Brazilian Agrarian Reform Among Placed Families” (“A Qualidade dos Assentamentos da Reforma Agraria Brasileira”, trans., Gerd Sparovek, research coordinator), put together by researchers from Brazil’s National Institute for Land Reform (INCRA), the University of Sao Paulo, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., interviewed 14,414 people on 4,430 properties expropriated between 1985 and 2001. The 218-page document gave high marks, overall, to agrarian reform, principally for the way the government has increased the number of land expropriations, and quality of life matters. Nearly every family placed on expropriated land says their life is much better than it was before.
But the goal to increase family income has largely failed, the report stated (page 137, paragraph 1). In fact, average monthly income for families on expropriated land has dropped from R$232 per month between 1985 and 1994 to R$198 from then on. Although the families are no longer going without food, a relatively few earn above Brazil’s minimum wage of R$260 per month, less than $65 per month given the current exchange rate.
In the northern state of Alagoas, the average monthly income is a miserable R$99, less than $2 per day. Sao Paulo farmers fair best, averaging R$317.
Another study, down between January 2000 and December 2001, by four professors from Rio de Janeiro said that infrastructure remains a major problem. On the income side, they reported that the lowest was R$116 per month.
“A lot more work has to go into land reform to make it viable,” said Jan Rocha, co-author of the book, “Cutting the Wire: The story of the landless movement in Brazil”. Her book was translated into Portuguese in May. “You need improved transport systems to get the food out, even on a small scale. The government is still divided. It’s a slow process. Many of the members in this group are desperate.”
(Latin America Bureau, 2002, http://www.latinamericabureau.org/?lid=1940 ).
(Please continue ... )
Target farmers struggle to produce
By Kenneth Rapoza
PARANAPOEMA, Brazil -- The World Food Program of the United Nations told Brazilian officials in mid-May that they would buy food from small, Brazilian farmers to distribute to hunger relief programs. The farmers are all former members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), the largest poor people’s movement in the Americas. James Morris, the Program’s director, said that buying food product from small producers, all of whom were seated on land expropriated by the Brazilian government through land reform policies, is a two-fold blessing because it will provide income power to rural workers who will ultimately be helping to eradicate hunger in poor countries.
“We are interested in the well being of small producers and want to buy from them whenever we can,” Morris was quoted as saying in Reuters on May 19. Morris said that product from these small farms will also be distributed to Program nations like Bolivia, Peru and Haiti.
There’s just one major problem. Many ex-MST farmers can barely produce food for themselves.
Still Struggling
By the U.N.’s own measurements, agrarian reform in Brazil has not lifted families out of poverty. That means, even though MST and similar groups have been given a tract of land to cultivate, most of them still barely earn the minimum wage.
A February 2003 report titled “Quality of Brazilian Agrarian Reform Among Placed Families” (“A Qualidade dos Assentamentos da Reforma Agraria Brasileira”, trans., Gerd Sparovek, research coordinator), put together by researchers from Brazil’s National Institute for Land Reform (INCRA), the University of Sao Paulo, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., interviewed 14,414 people on 4,430 properties expropriated between 1985 and 2001. The 218-page document gave high marks, overall, to agrarian reform, principally for the way the government has increased the number of land expropriations, and quality of life matters. Nearly every family placed on expropriated land says their life is much better than it was before.
But the goal to increase family income has largely failed, the report stated (page 137, paragraph 1). In fact, average monthly income for families on expropriated land has dropped from R$232 per month between 1985 and 1994 to R$198 from then on. Although the families are no longer going without food, a relatively few earn above Brazil’s minimum wage of R$260 per month, less than $65 per month given the current exchange rate.
In the northern state of Alagoas, the average monthly income is a miserable R$99, less than $2 per day. Sao Paulo farmers fair best, averaging R$317.
Another study, down between January 2000 and December 2001, by four professors from Rio de Janeiro said that infrastructure remains a major problem. On the income side, they reported that the lowest was R$116 per month.
“A lot more work has to go into land reform to make it viable,” said Jan Rocha, co-author of the book, “Cutting the Wire: The story of the landless movement in Brazil”. Her book was translated into Portuguese in May. “You need improved transport systems to get the food out, even on a small scale. The government is still divided. It’s a slow process. Many of the members in this group are desperate.”
(Latin America Bureau, 2002, http://www.latinamericabureau.org/?lid=1940 ).
(Please continue ... )