Tag Archives: Brazil

Repeasantisation in Araponga, Brazil – a quest for space

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By Leonardo Ayabe van den Berg, MSc graduate International Development Studies

Recently I completed my MSc-thesis. The thesis research is set in the municipality of Araponga in Brazil, where (re)peasantisation occurred and continues to occur. Here I describe some of the findings of my research.  When interested you can downlaod a pdf of my thesis ‘Invisible peasant movements: A case study of (re)peasantisation in Brazil‘.

Araponga

Araponga

When I started to read about the peasantry there were two major things that occurred to me as striking. First, in policy peasants are often considered as a group of laggards: who are unable to take care of themselves and therefore need social assistance; who rely on primitive forms of technology and therefore must be modernized; or who are impeded by a stagnant, traditional mentality and must therefore be converted into small entrepreneurs. The peasant mode of farming is seldomly considered in its own right. Second, in academic theory peasants are predicted to disappear, weaken or live a life of poverty as a result of their inferior mode of production and their helplessness. Departing from the assumption that actors are driven by a specific economic-rational logic, neo-liberal approaches roughly theorise that peasants commoditize, compete with other farms as a result of which there will be regional growth. Tradition or culture can block economic rationality and the transition from peasant to entrepreneur. The peasant will then be doomed to poverty. In contrast to the neo-liberal approach, neo-Marxist approaches, most of which also assume that the peasant is driven by an economic logic and commoditize, theorise that commoditization will either lead to the destruction of the peasant enterprise or to a fate of poverty. This is the result of price fluctuations, squeeze in agriculture (caused by the trend of decreasing produce prices and increasing input prices for farmers), or newly emerging food networks (through which income from weaker, peasant, parts of the chain are squeezed in favour of the more powerful, retailers, part of the chain). These predictions and preconceptions contradict with what happened in Araponga, a rural municipality in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil where there was a rise in the number of peasants and an increase in welfare. The objective of this thesis was to find out how this was possible: how had (re)peasantisation occurred in Araponga. Continue reading →

Social movement and Brazil

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Last week friday’s lecture in the course ‘People Policy and Resources’ discussed theory and practice of social movements. Social movements can be defined as social forms through which people:

 “coordinate and act together as collectives, respond to shifting environments and conflicts, dramatize and frame shared understandings of grievances, solidarity and visions, and challenge and influence existing political and cultural systems of authority.” (Karpantschof 2006)

One of the examples in class was the Landless People’s Movement in Brazil (MST). As a background to this example students had to read about the history and community-making of the MST (Wolford, 2003) and about the adoption of agroecology as “the science of sustainable agriculture”  within the movement (Delgado, 2008: 563).

Thanks to the cooperation of our group with the Rural Development Post Graduate Program in Brazil, of the Federal University of Rio Grande de Sul (see earlier blogs 27 January, 13 February, 6 March) the students could also see how the movement works through part of a dvd ‘Agriculacao National de Agroecologia’. Together we watched a documentary about IL ENA, the national meeting for agroecology in Brasil which took place in 2006. The documentary clearly showed how social movements work through both practice ánd language. On the one hand the struggle for the material; actions for rights and resources. And on the other hand the struggle against dominant discourse; the construction of alternative conceptions and significations which politicizes dominant understandings and creates room for change.

Evolution of Rural Development Paradigm in Brazil

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In a recent research seminar prof. Sergio Schneider (schneide@ufrgs.br), coordinator of the  Rural Development Post Graduate Program from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), presented a telling analysis of major changes in Rural Developments Policies in Brazil in the last twenty years. He explained that the recent evolution in rural development policies, as effectuated by president Lula, has to be understood within the context the evident political struggles on land. Brazil is a large country with traditionally a sharp contrast between the interests of agro-industrial conglomerates and social rural movements of landless people and peasants (e.g. MST).

This is reflected in a dualist agrarian structure between capitalist and entrepreneurial family farming and peasant familiy farming and rural poor (landless) who are struggling for survival and autonomy. In 1995 1 % of the owners with more then 1000 ha owned 45% of all land, while 90% of the owners with less then 100 ha owned only 20%. An unexpected and striking consequence of rural poverty is, that food security in rural areas is significantly lower then in urban areas. In rural areas 26% of the housholds suffers severe food insecurity versus 17% in urban areas. Because of this dualist agrarian structure Brazil is probably the only country in the world with two Ministries of Agriculture, serving different needs.

Continue reading →

Rural Development in Brazil: interfaces between public policy and social actors

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From the 10th till the 28th of February Prof. Sergio Schneider of the Federal University of Rio Grande de Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil is visiting Wageningen under the agreement CAPES-Wageningen University. Sergio is Professor of Rural Sociology and Coordinator of the Post-Graduate Programme in Rural Development (PGDR). In his contribution to the Rural Sociology Weblog he briefly introduces his research domain. He will also present this at a research seminar of the Rural Sociology Group on Thursday 19 February at 16.00 hrs in room C70 of the Leeuwenborch building.

Sergio SchneiderBy Sergio Schneider – Since the 1990’s discussions on rural development in Brazil are no longer associated with policies to combat poverty. From these times onwards discussions on rural development have been related to themes like environmental sustainability, land reform, policies to support small family farming and more recently, the issue of food security. The discussion on rural development in Brazil has gained strong momentum … Continue reading →

Rural development in Brazil

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fabio_kesslerProf. Fabio dal Soglio from the Federal University of Rio Grande de Sul (UFRGS) is currently our guest. He is one of the professors working in the Post-Graduate Programme on Rural Development (PGDR) and he has a particular interest in agro-ecology.

The  UFRGS and the PGDR-group in particular wants to extend collaboration with the Rural Sociology Group, as initiated by prof. van der Ploeg, by the exchange of staff, exchange of MSc and PhD-students and by joint research.

As part of an assignment for the MSc-course Sociology in Development, a group of MSc-students grasped the occasion and interviewed prof. Fabio dal Soglio on the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and their struggle for land and land reforms.

mst-21Quoted from the MST-website (English edition):

 The MST is the largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 million landless members organized in 23 out 27 states. The MST carries out long-overdue land reform in a country mired by unjust land distribution. In Brazil, 1.6% of the landowners control roughly half (46.8%) of the land on which crops could be grown. Just 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable lands.

Since 1985, the MST has peacefully occupied unused land where they have established cooperative farms, constructed houses, schools for children and adults and clinics, promoted indigenous cultures and a healthy and sustainable environment and gender equality. The MST has won land titles for more than 350,000 families in 2,000 settlements as a result of MST actions, and 180,000 encamped families currently await government recognition. Land occupations are rooted in the Brazilian Constitution, which says land that remains unproductive should be used for a larger social function.

 The MST’s success lies in its ability to organize and educate. Members have not only managed to secure land, therefore food security for their families, but also continue to develop a sustainable socio-economic model that offers a concrete alternative to today’s globalization that puts profits before people and humanity.