4,000 landless peasants, exasperated by the agricultural policy of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the encroachment of agribusiness, which has had a detrimental effect on family agriculture in Brazil, have gathered in protest, demanding land reform from President Dilma Rousseff.  image expired

The protestors, who have camped in the heart of the Brasilian Capital, Brasilia all week, awaiting a response from the government, chanted “Dilma has made the latifundio (large landowners) richer and forgotten the landless.”

Miguel Carter, Editor of a book on the Landless Movement in Brazil, told the AFP, “Brazil is the World champion of inequitable land distribution... and the concentration of property is now likely to increase, thanks to the commodity boom which has sparked fresh land grabs.”  According to official figures, in Brazil 1 per cent of landowners own 45 per cent of the workable land.

A week before the landless protestors set up camp in Brasilia, 50,000 farmers organised a protest in the city, demanding access to land. José Valdir Misnerovizz, spokesperson for the Landless Movement and Via Campesina, the international small-scale farmers’ movement, explained that when former president Lula came to power the movement expected great things; Lula, a former metal worker and historic ally of social causes, “promised a lot, but did not deliver.”     

Lula’s government claimed to have redistribute land to 600,000 families between 2003 and 2010, however, peasant movements state that there are still 4 million landless families in the country, of which 200,000 live in camps without infrastructure. They say the government’s efforts have been insufficient.

The landless Movement, which has been active for 27 years, aiming to secure land for peasant farmers in Brazil, continued its policy of direct action this week by occupying the largest orange plantation in the state of Sao Paulo. The group wants to see more action in land reform legislation.

Sr Carter said, “In this country, the landowner and agribusiness lobbies carry such weight in parliament, Lula never entered into conflict with these interests and since Rousseff took over in January the general feeling is that the promised reforms have disappeared from the agenda.” He said that too little had been done to alleviate poverty in rural Brazil.