Synthesis paper prepared for the informal panel
session organized by the CFS -Committee on World Food Security - to be held on 16 May 2003
in Rome (FAO).
University of São Paulo- Department of Economics (Full Professor)
Seade
Foundation – (Executive Director)
Brazil has not done, has not been doing, neither
will do a real agrarian reform. One can argue that the almost 20 million
hectares transferred to hundreds of thousands of families settled during the two terms of President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso finally broke the century long delay of the Brazilian agrarian reform.
Nevertheless, the numbers show that
only 8% of the area then controlled by 785 thousand “fazendeiros” were
transferred to the family sector, increasing the area of its 4 million farms by
15%. Family farmers had 37% of the agricultural land and 42% eight years
afterwards. It will continue to be demand as well as pressure for the opening
of new settlements. The new governments will continue favoring settling more
farm workers. This kind of policy exists around different countries in the
world, even in those that carried out massive agrarian reform in the 19th
and 20th centuries. Settlements are certainly a necessary but not
sufficient condition of agrarian reform; especially when they are made little
by little. However, this is a powerful way of poverty alleviation.
Throughout the 21-year history of
the Brazilian Workers’ Party (Partido dos
Trabalhadores - PT), its main leader, the former unionist Lula,
never got tired of repeating the need to prioritize agrarian reform. But in his
first visit to a settlement, President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva made a point
of declaring that his goal will not be to expand agrarian reform. He stated
that he would settle less than his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso
(FHC), because attention should be given not so much to the quantity, but
rather to the quality, of settlements. "If
we were going to dispute with numbers, we would have already lost the battle.
Our victory lies not in the quantity, but in the quality of life of
settlers," he declared to the five thousand people present at
the event.[2] A few days
earlier, Miguel Rossetto, the neophyte minister chosen by Lula to head these
"quality settlements", gave a disastrous interview to the top
national weekly magazine, demonstrating his lack of knowledge regarding the
government's actions: "we are
studying a new agrarian reform model".
These events were widely
discussed by the media as showing the PT’s lack of preparation in addressing a
subject that seemed to be its specialty.
However, this is an extremely superficial view of the problem that might
contribute to the opposition’s rhetoric, but cannot offer a satisfactory
explanation for a number of fiascos that have been taking place since the
beginning of Lula’s administration (which, all else aside, are not restricted
to the promotion of land access, but are even more egregious in the
construction of the food security program known as Fome Zero – “Zero Hunger”, or in the arena
of research and use regulations of genetically modified soybean seeds, for
example). And the reasons for all this stumbling about can only be understood
from the viewpoint of the interdependence and embeddedness of land reform
within the general institutional, political, economic, and policy context.
1.History
Brazil is one of the most
shocking examples of opting for corporate farming, or as Hans Binswager puts
it, of opting for a premature expulsion model of the work force from
agriculture. That is, of disregarding and showing intolerance towards family
agriculture. Except for the colonization movement that started in the
southernmost part of the country and settled as far as the Southeastern region
of the State of Paraná, the agrarian pattern in other regions was formed based
on characteristics similar to Eastern European ones, where landowners preferred
to block the rural population from having access to land ownership.
Strictly speaking, Brazil's
agricultural system began to emerge with the coffee plantations, in the late 19th
century. Before that, agricultural and husbandry activities did not consolidate
into any type of integrated system. And the way the elite abolished slavery and
imported immigrant settlers to work the coffee plantations had the same
historical sense as Eastern Europe's "second servitude". A strong
pact was formed to bar Blacks, European, and Japanese immigrants from owning
land. Only after the 1929 crisis and the long depression that followed were
some immigrants able to buy land lots for sale by several bankrupt plantation
owners. At the same time, a great population surplus had formed that started to
pressure the government for access to land. And starting in the early 60's, the
Northeastern “peasant leagues”, as well as the Southern “landless movements”,
almost caused João Goulart's government to opt for family farming.
No one knows how many of
those who migrated to the Western region during the military dictatorship were able to acquire farm land. It is only
possible to say that the official ‘colonization’ programs during that 20-year
period reached only 115 thousand families (an average of 5.5 thousand families
per year). This number is equivalent to the number of families settled by the
governments of the different States in the first 10 years of the
re-democratization process, while the National Institute of Colonization and
Agrarian Reform (Instituto Nacional de
Colonização e Reforma Agrária -
INCRA) settled a few more. That means that between 1985 and 1994 the chances of
a landless family being settled were four times greater than during the
dictatorship. And this performance increased much more during the two terms of
the FHC administration.
FHC's first term as president
started with a very serious economic crisis in the agricultural sector as a
result of the perverse indebtedness of many farmers. In mid-1995, rural Brazil
had an open wound: nonpayment levels of over 30%. After a tense period of
inaction - caused by the obvious lack of confidence with which the government’s
economic area viewed minister Andrade Vieira - the problem was finally resolved
thanks to help from the hegemonic party among the big landowners (PPB political
party) in the so-called "bancada ruralista". And this political
ability of the group more to the right of the government’s support group was
consecrated in FHC's second term by the excellent performance of one of the
federal government's oldest machines: the Ministry of Agriculture. Lula inherited
an agricultural situation that is diametrically opposite to the bottleneck
situation in effect in 1995.
The beginning of FHC's first
term was also dramatic in dealing with situations known as "social
conflicts in the countryside". Two terrible slaughters in Carajás (State
of Pará) and Corumbiara (State of Rondônia) were necessary before political
support leaders concluded that the agrarian problem could no longer be handled
by obscure engineers unable to receive from Congress, economic ministries, and
the President, the measures indispensable to the fulfillment of the commitment
signed during the 1994 elections. This context produced the Raul Jungmann
phenomenon, a former member of the communist youth organization who was running
the federal environmental protection agency (Ibama), after having acquired
broad operational experience in various posts at the Ministry of Planning. He
conducted a real turnaround, which today can be appreciated based on the
initial performance of the brand-new Ministry of Agrarian Development on at
least two fronts: a) the strengthening of family agriculture, through supplying
specific training skills, technical assistance, infrastructure, subsidized
credit and commercial channels; b) and expansion of this category by settling
former landless rural inhabitants, squatters, land tenants, and very small
landowners through different types of settlements.
Unfortunately, this double
success - agricultural and agrarian -, the legacy of the so-called "FHC
Era", was not very well assimilated by the social bases of the PT, the
party of the current president Lula: the Landless Workers’ movement (Movimento
dos Sem Terra - MST) and the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers
(Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores
na Agricultura - Contag). This is where there is a risk of backsliding.
However, it is not impossible that Lula's government may choose an alternative
platform, one made up of the participation of a vast multiparty group of
scholars, employees, trade-unionists, NGOs, mayors associations, and
representatives of micro and small businesses: the “National Plan for
Sustainable Development of Rural Brazil” - PNDRS (Plano Nacional para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável do Brasil Rural),
the third version of which was approved by the respective Council (CNDRS: www.cndrs.org.br) in November 2002 after being discussed in
July with specialists of at least ten organizations: IDB, World Bank, FAO,
Ifad, Undp, Unesco, Eclac, Iica, EU, and Usaid. In sum, this plan advocates
that, in addition to deepening the two programs already consolidated in the
last two years – agrarian reform settlements and the National Program for
Strengthening Family Agriculture - Pronaf (Programa
Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar) – the next government
shall also consider essential the emergence of two other programs, which are
absolutely decisive to the progress of Brazil's rural areas: renovation of
education and economic diversification. Now that there is a reasonable level,
both for agribusiness as well as for addressing social issues in the
countryside, it is necessary to think about rural development, which goes
beyond just agriculture and husbandry activities.
The
settlement policy
Development
Until 1995, family farmers had no
federal policy giving them access to credit,
training skills, technical assistance and extension services,
commercialization, or essential infrastructure. Agrarian interventions were
sketchy and insufficient to fight plantations that did not comply with their
social function. Some of the conflicts were resolved
without actually addressing the real demand for democratic access to land
ownership. Thus, by the middle of the 1990s, an important historical turning point was reached. With the new dynamics acquired by the
settlement policy and the rise of the National Program for Strengthening
Family Agriculture (Pronaf), there was a clear
advance. Still, the absolute need to give immediate answers to the
historical demands caused the implementation of these two policies to suffer
from lack of integration, lack of definition of
priority areas, lack of proper links between land and agriculture, lack of
dialogue and coordination between agriculture and the other sectors of rural
economy, and a need to combine all this with the local and micro regional
evolution processes while implementing these two policies. Even so, in four years, about 280 thousand
families of rural workers were settled. And Pronaf counted more than 1.,5 million
operations that benefited family farming, as well as investments in city infrastructure.
By evaluating results obtained up to
1998, it became clear that there was a need for changes geared to more
integrated action between the two policies and their future insertion in a
truly sustainable development strategy. As the most obvious consequence of a
settlement policy is the emergence of more family farmers, a greater
coordination with Pronaf was also imposed. Two credit lines were then unified
in the first semester of 1999, with the extinction of the Program of Special
Credit for Agrarian Reform Areas (Programa
de Crédito Especial para as Áreas de Reforma Agrária - Procera) and the
creation of a line of credit called “Pronaf A”, exclusively for agrarian reform
settlers, while credit lines “Pronaf B, C, and D” were aimed at other family
farming categories.
To operationalize this change, the
Ministry of Agrarian Development (Ministério
do Desenvolvimento Agrário - MDA) was established, encompassing the
agrarian reform policy and Pronaf, which was formerly among the duties of the
Ministry of Agriculture. It was also during this period that the National
Council for Sustainable Rural Development (Conselho
Nacional de Desenvolvimento Rural Sustentável- Cndrs) emerged with the
mission of planning the future of rural Brazil, composed of representatives
from nine federal government ministries, nine entities of “civil society”, and
a few other ambivalent institutions.
Though aware that the expansion and
strengthening of family farming required innumerable integrated actions, the
recently created MDA concentrated its efforts on three main issues:
a)
Settling families through
various agrarian actions (mainly expropriation, acquisitions, public land and
agrarian credit);
b)
Supplying cost and investment
credits for family farmers;
c)
Transferring federal
resources to municipal governments that have a significant concentration of
family farmers in order for investment in infrastructure through plans approved
by the Municipal Rural Development Councils (CMDR).
Besides creating the
National Agrarian Reform Program, MDA also created two other – and very recent
– federal intervention tools to promote access to land ownership: the Agrarian
Reform and Land Fund (Fundo de Terras e
Reforma Agrária), called “Banco da Terra”, and Agrarian Credit (Credito Fundiário) called “Cédula da
Terra”. These are two new ways of allowing the acquisition and transfer of
property that could not be expropriated through traditional means, since they
either are in accordance with their social role, or have an area smaller than
the minimum (15 modules). It is estimated that the idle areas alone in very
small properties correspond to 40 million hectares.
It should be emphasized that
the agrarian reform actions - except for policies developed by “Banco da Terra” and “Cédula da Terra” – do not meet the needs
of those farmers who don’t own enough land, and therefore, need to increase
their productive area in order to become truly viable family production units.
There is still a need for complementary actions dealing with agrarian
regulation. After all, areas offered in the rural land market by farmers who
leave their occupation (generally those who retire without heirs) are usually
acquired by all types of businessmen, lawyers, doctors, etc., or even by big
farmers without offering a purchasing option to those who most need this type
of resource: neighboring family farms who, most of the time, are headed by
dynamic youths starting their career. Society would certainly gain a lot more
if there were some means of increasing the chances that these properties be
transferred to rural youths.
Between 1995 and 2001, almost 20 million
hectares of land were obtained, half through expropriation, since the
properties did not comply with their social function foreseen by the Federal
Constitution, and the other half through acquisition and land credit programs.
During this period, between actions of land acquisition, installation, and
consolidation of settlements, the National Agrarian Reform Program’s budget
reached R$ 13.,3
billion (around something
like US$ 5 billion according to the by the late April
2003 currency exchange
raterate of change). These investments
contributed enormously to reducing social conflicts and, as a consequence, the
number of violent events and deaths resulting from land disputes.
For each settled family, the
FHC administration invested a lot in infrastructure and land acquisition. But this high expense with
land resources slowly decreased as the program’s scale increased, finally
reaching something like US$ 4 thousand per family. As each family establishment
counted by the 1995/6 census employed 3.7 people, the cost of creating a job in
agrarian settlements was cut by more than half. No other type of public
investment of comparable amount was able to create so many new opportunities of
income generation, nor was any other type able to distribute so many assets.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to compare the total area of settlements and the total area of farms and ranches, and the number of settled families with the number of families who already had access to land. The almost 20 million hectares of settlements established throughout the eight years of the FHC administration correspond to 5% of the total area of farms and ranches counted by the 1995/96 census. In other words, the program transferred, at most, 8% of the enormous area controlled by 785 thousand corporate farmers to agricultural families made up of more than 4 million small farms and ranches. Through this action, the area of family farms must have increased about 15% as the estimate indicates in the table below.
Brazil’s Agrarian Profile
at the Turn of the Millennium
|
|
Area in 1995 |
|
Area in 2000 |
|
|
|
Millions of hectares |
% |
Millions of hectares |
% |
|
Corporate farms |
224 |
63 |
210 |
58 |
|
Family farms |
130 |
37 |
150 |
42 |
|
Total |
354 |
100 |
360 |
100 |
Source: Author’s estimate based on the 1995/6 Agricultural Census
The most unbiased and
detailed balance of the “FHC Era” agricultural and agrarian policies made by
journalist Mauro Malin, editor of Update
magazine, from the American Chamber of Commerce of São Paulo (www.amcham.com.br), concludes with the
following synthesis:
"Fernando
Henrique made a settlement policy he calls agrarian
reform, with which he avoids a political explosion and attempts to attack the
crucial matter of social inequality. The right wing thinks the President is
lenient with all the commotion, and wastes money. At the same time, the
government renegotiates the big
farmers' debts and allows agribusiness to reap the rewards of its competence.
The left wing finds therein the proof that Fernando Henrique is working for the
right wing,
and thus tries to disqualify the agrarian settlement policy. These two opposing perceptions do not work. Taken to
the final consequences, the policies that they assume would lead to a
catastrophe. It would not be the productivity, the harvests, or herds that
would increase in the countryside, but rather confrontation, violence, and despondency. And Brazil would
retreat on a terrain that is increasingly more important to its
development." (Malin 2002:211)
Methods
Settling agricultural
families is guaranteed by the utilization of various instruments for obtaining
land that have responded more to social demands than the needs of economic
viability, which involves the availability of quality land at low cost. Among
the main tools, are:
a) Expropriation by social interest;
b) Gathering of public land (mainly in the Northern region), as a
means of incorporating useful land up to then without a specific destination;
c) Acquisition through purchase, as a way to attend emergency
necessities;
d) Vacancies in already established settlements. [3]
As
to the settlements, the following standards should be respected in principle:
a)
No settlement project should be created without the guarantee of resources for
its implementation and consolidation, which, on average, should occur in three
years; b) every family should be granted credit to support their installation,
the values of which should be up to date; c) training
should be offered to settlers throughout the first two years of the
settlement’s existence; d) the government should create a permanent rural
housing program; e) all basic infrastructure (roads, rural electric lighting,
and water supply) should have guaranteed resources before creating the
settlement project and its implementation should take no longer than three
years; f) implementation of other actions regarding infrastructure and basic needs
(health, education, sports and leisure) should be discussed and carried out in
a combined action between INCRA, other federal government sectors, and
municipal and State governments, preferably before the creation of the
settlement projects.
The following intervention tools are also
essential to promoting access to land: a) recovery of illegal public land
possessions through land regulation allowing ratification of small squatters’
areas; b) demarcation (defining location), recognition, regulation, “desintrusão” (keeping the area free by
reimbursing old inhabitants’ improvements) and giving land titles to remaining quilombos [4]
which should be subject to public policies that encourage these communities to
remain; c) conclusion of the
demarcation and legalization of
native South American Indian tribal land, with the guarantee that these
groups have the right to use the natural resources in their territories
(special conditions to access
government policies should be guaranteed to tribal groups who live on lands
already changed by human action and who survive by means of agricultural and/or
extractivist activities); d) provision of simple and fast administrative title
to possessions 5 years or older; e) creation of “Resex” (extractivist reserves).
Deficiencies in rural surveying systems
have been pinpointed as responsible for the difficulty in collecting taxes and
in maintaining precise public records, in addition to facilitating fraud and
illegal land possession. But the necessary legal support to resolve these
problems lies in the Public Registry Law. Furthermore, until recently, the high
costs of land demarcation through conventional topography methods restricted
the production of precise record maps. Technological advances, however, in
information as well as in satellite coverage, now make it easier to obtain
precise measurements and demarcations at an affordable cost. Thanks to more
modern surveying methods and their use in land regulating processes, it is
already possible to discern institutional requirements that may in the future
allow a better performance of land markets.
And, if efficiently applied, taxes could also be imposed on potential
land use, as a further incentive to improve land use methods and management of
natural resources.
Commonly, judgments and interpretations
of the law restrict the fulfillment of a property’s “social function” to
indexes regarding land production and productivity, ignoring environmental and
labor legislation parameters. Additionally,
there are legal gaps that allow judicial decisions on reimbursement amounts
much higher than the price of lands expropriated for agrarian reform. This
constitutes an abusive transfer of wealth to ex-owners and middlemen, in
addition to the objective impossibility of settlers reimbursing the actual
price of the land.
The National Agrarian Auditor (Ouvidoria Agrária Nacional - OAN)
established a new system for mediating land conflict processes. It brought
important players to the bargaining table– such as the judiciary sector, the
Public Ministry, and the police department – with the objective of addressing
conflicts related to citizenship. Many states also started to promote agrarian
auditors, as OAN’s credibility increased. Establishing a prevention and
mediation policy in dealing with agrarian conflicts should focus on strategic
planning, carried out in a participative manner, through the democratization of
formulation, management, and control of public policies. The recently created
Permanent Follow Up and Conflict Resolution Committee (Comitê Permanente de Acompanhamento e Solução de Conflitos) is
another modern and efficient prevention tool, providing effective answers to
issues that could potentially generate conflicts and making proposals for the
improvement of agrarian reform actions and support to farming families.
Unfortunately, Brazil does not have the
institutional bases to establish controlling actions regarding land structures
of the agricultural sector (like the French “Safer”), even though this type of problem has been well recognized
every time the need for “small farm unification” has been mentioned. A great
deal of legislative and organizational innovation will be required for Brazil
to advance in the area of land consolidation.
Potential Pronaf
beneficiaries are all agricultural families, including settlers and /or those
assisted by “Banco da Terra” e “Cédula da Terra”. Loans can be used for
costs – financing farm, livestock, commercial, industrial and service
activities – and investment – financing implementation, expansion and
modernization of the production and services infrastructure on the farm or in
nearby rural communities. Pronaf is made up of different credit lines, adapted
to the beneficiary’s profile, whose access and payment conditions have been
more and more favorable to family farmers. The Lula
administration now has the task of eliminating a few obstacles that are still
making it difficult for a large number of families to access credit, especially
those related to bank bureaucracy.
Around
85% of the country’s agriculture sector establishments are family
farms and account for almost 40% of the gross value
of production, and over 50% of most food products included in the ‘basic
needs basket’ (cesta básica). But the category of family farming actually encompasses very
distinct social groups: 40% practically do not generate monetary income (amount
that varies from 25% in the Southern region to more than 50% in the Northeast).
From the standpoint of market integration, 20% of the family farms are
generally classified as “very integrated”, while more than 40% are
“little integrated” (with a variation of 30% in the Central region and up to
more than 50% in the North).
Considering only
commercial insertion and gross value of production, family farms tend to be divided
into 3 groups:
Ø
1.,4
million are characterized by greater capitalization, structure and market
participation, besides producing a considerable amount of food for the internal
market;
Ø 850 thousand
families with almost no capital and with poor commercial insertion. Although
they produce food for the internal market, they still face problems in
accessing loans and financing. These problems are mainly due to lack of
technical assistance and a need for training skills;
Ø
Almost 2 million farms generate little or no income from the
establishment as the area is basically used for subsistence production.
Results produced by agrarian reform
programs and the strengthening of family agriculture could certainly have been
greater and more solid if there had been, in the eight years of the FHC
administration, an integrated technical assistance policy involving the three
spheres of government and society itself.
When the technical assistance system (known as Embrater) was dismantled
as of the beginning of the 90’s, it also put
assistance to farm families at risk, since actions in this field became very
limited and no longer had the universal character of
assisting family farmers.
The
deficiency of infrastructure and services in rural Brazil is a direct determinant
of the precarious living conditions of agricultural families, reflected mainly
in the low social indicator values. This deficiency is exposed through poor
road and transport conditions, and through lack of or difficulty in product
storage. The scenario is aggravated by the lack of electric energy, water
supply, and sewage disposal, especially in the Northeastern region.
Consequently, living conditions are more precarious and limit production
possibilities and added value of products.
The
Pronaf-Infrastructure line brought a few differentials in relation to other
types of actions: a) it encouraged discussions between family farmers and other
local agents on rural development perspectives; b) it innovated in its degree
of decentralization and in its coordination of partnerships involving municipal
and State governments; and c) it advanced in the definition of municipalities
to be supported by means of clear and objective criteria. This Pronaf line
contributed to the development of
municipalities with a considerable presence of family farms. Nevertheless,
budget limitations did not allow “Pronaf-Infrastructure” to attend every
eligible municipality. Housing, electric energy, rural roads, water supply, and
the sewage system as a whole are still great needs.
4. Results and
impacts
There is great controversy
surrounding the actual results of the policy of settlements and about the two
types of “Pronaf” credit lines aimed at settlements (individual credit and
infrastructure investment). At the end of the FHC administration, there was a
great campaign to disqualify the settlements. The government was accused of
counting “ghost” settlements and of abandoning families after placing them on
land, which resulted in great evasion. But to demonstrate that a few failures
could not be used to condemn a whole program, at the end of 2002 MDA invited
researchers at the University of São Paulo agronomy school (Esalq/USP) to try
to establish an accurate picture of the settlements.[5] And the results confirm a few old hypotheses.
First of all, settlements are normally
(with rare exceptions) in marginal areas, be it from the edaphic-climactic or
the economic viewpoint, mainly in terms of connections with other markets
(urban agglomerations and ports). This is a result of the agrarian reform
institutional framework and the historical period. Very rarely are favorable
areas not exploited or under-exploited, which obviously protects them from
expropriation. In other words, settlements only come into place in prime areas
when: a) conflicts between heirs may leave the land idle, thus leaving the
property open to expropriation; b) a change in the destination of public
property; c) when the government decides to buy certain real estate (as occurred
with the Fazenda Itamarati, chosen for President Lula’s first visit to a
settlement).
Second, a great number of settled families are made up of social groups victimized by wretchedness and exclusion. These are families who previously had almost no access to housing, health, education, or any type of credit. They tried to survive in any corner of the countryside as laborers, part-time workers, and harvest workers. In short, a great part of settled families previously lived in a state close to lumpen. Only a small portion is made up of the descendents of family farmers who never owned land (sharecroppers, small tenant farmers, squatters), or had insufficient land to guarantee that family members who wished to live as farmers remained in farming.
The outcome of combining marginal land with very unskilled labor, and basically no investment capability, could very rarely turn into activities and occupations capable of generating reasonable income. And all the evidence available on this subject converges to an apparent paradox: the lower the monetary income received by settlers, the greater the number of those who declare themselves satisfied, basically because their previous situation was much worse. In reality, regional contrasts are very strong: in the Northeastern region income is lower and satisfaction is higher, whereas in the South and Southeast the opposite seems to take place. In general, however, access to land caused a few people to jump from a situation of extreme destitution to a situation of poverty; whereas others where able to eliminate the poverty status, but could not reach a satisfactory level if compared, for example, with permanent farm employees, or even with certain types of agricultural day laborers. There are, however, two basic differences that favor the settler, even when his monetary income is very low. The first is the dignity of living on his own land, and to gather his family around a table of their own. The second is having stability that guarantees ‘basic needs’.
Sparovek (2003) showed that,
in general, both the environmental quality of settlements and the quality of
life of settlers are precarious. The four main factors that characterize the
poor quality of life are: a) difficulty in accessing health assistance in
emergencies; b) difficulty in accessing good quality water; c) difficulty in
accessing high schools; d) lack of domestic sewage treatment. And the four main
factors that account for poor environmental quality are: a) lack of
conservation areas defined by law; b) disrespect regarding the maintenance of legal
areas of native vegetation; c) illegal extraction of natural resources; and d)
erosion. However, the author emphasizes:
“components
of social assistance in agrarian reform actions (credit for installation and
for housing, as well as basic infrastructure),
are not the most important points, nor the ones that mostly attract rural
workers.”
(Sparovek, 2003:170).
If they were, continues the author,
indicators of abandonment and illegal selling of land plots would not be so
insignificant. This emerged as the great surprise of the research. Contrary to
what was pronounced over and over by the disqualification campaign waged
against the FHC administration agrarian programs at the end of 2002 by one of
the main Brazilian newspapers, Sparovek says that the effectiveness of land
distribution was significant. And the main factor highlighted is the small
number of vacant or unified plots.
Lessons
and perspectives for the future
The FHC administration’s
settlement program was globally successful because it elevated a considerable
amount of families above the poverty line thanks to promoting access to land.
It showed that it is possible to settle around 100 thousand families per year,
even having a series of legal and financial limitations related to expropriations.
That means, 100 thousand families per year began – at least – to have access to
housing and nourishment. But a sine qua
non condition of this performance was a strong drop in the price of land in
the years that followed monetary stabilization, coupled with several mechanisms
of obtaining these land assets. It was possible to reimburse big landowners
according to market prices and to buy land easily that could not be
expropriated.
However, as the process of settling families rose in scale and rhythm, it was not possible to maintain the program’s quality, which was not that great to begin with. And this results mainly from a serious institutional problem: the absurd centralization of actions within the arena of the federal government, mainly within one agency: INCRA. When there is little involvement of the state and municipal governments, settlements are viewed as “territorial enclaves” of the federal government in a region. To improve the quality of settlements it will be necessary to transfer many of INCRA’s tasks to the state Land Institutes. It is with them that farm workers’ unions (Contag and its state federations), landless organizations (like the MST), NGOs, municipal governments, and other local entities will be able to consolidate present and future settlements. Only this type of collective action will improve the settlers’ performance.
Thus, it is possible to identify
in President Lula’s declarations stated in the beginning of this paper that
indeed there is a perfect awareness that it would be much more logical to
invest in the quality of already existing settlements than to increase the
number of marginal areas, which, all else aside, are not as cheap anymore as
they were in the 1990s. However, it is necessary to convince political and
union organizations (essentially MST and Contag) and to
combine this game strategy with their main collaborators, starting with the
Minister in charge of the program, Miguel Rossetto. He declared that he has
been studying a “new model” for agrarian reform, whose main point is:
“instead of making a great number of
small settlements scattered throughout Brazil, let’s organize a smaller number
of larger settlements”.
In other words, for the Minister, the problem is
settlement size. However, quality is much more common in small than in large
settlements. When this contradiction is resolved between what the President
thinks and what his collaborators think, maybe another approach to the problem
can take place; one that in the meantime remains inside a desk drawer: the plan
elaborated by CNDRS. Its emphasis is territorial and focuses on strengthening
family farming (settled or not) by promoting economic diversification in rural
regions.
ABRAMOVAY, Ricardo (2002) “Diversificação das economias rurais no
Nordeste”, NEAD Report (mimeo) (www.econ.fea.usp.br/abramovay/)
BINSWAGER,
Hans P. (1994) “Agricultural and Rural Development: Painful Lessons”, revised
version of the Simon Brandt Address, September 21, 1994 at the 32nd
annual meeting of the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa
in Pretoria, South Africa. (mimeo).
CNDRS – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Rural Sustentável – Plano
Nacional de Desenvolvimento Rural Sustentável (PNDRS), November 2002 (www.cndrs.org.br)
HEREDIA, B., Medeiros, L., Palmeira, M. Cintrão, R., Leite, S. (2002)
“Análise dos impactos regionais da reforma agrária no Brasil”, Estudos
Sociedade e Agricultura, Rio de Janeiro, n. 18 (April), pp. 73-111.
LEITE, Sergio (2002) “Impactos econômicos dos assentamentos rurais no
Brasil: análise das suas dimensões regionais”, XXX Encontro Nacional de
Economia (Anpec), Nova Friburgo, RJ, December 2002.
MALIN, Mauro (2002) “Agricultura e reforma agrária”, in: Bolívar
Lamounier & Rubens Figueiredo
(orgs.) A Era FHC: um balanço, S.Paulo: Cultura Ed. Assoc. pp. 179-214.
MARTINS, José de Souza (coord) Eliane Brenneisen, Maria Aparecida Moraes
Silva, Maria da Conceição Quinteiro, Maria de Nazareth Baudel Wanderley e Sônia
Barbosa Magalhães (2003) Travessias; A vivência da reforma agrária
nos assentamentos, Editora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do
Sul, Porto Alegre, 2003.
NAVARRO, Zander (2002) “Do ‘mundo da roça’ ao mercado: mudanças recentes
e o desenvolvimento agrário no Sul do Brasil (Políticas públicas e
desenvolvimento rural)”. Brasília: NEAD Report (mimeo).
_________________ (1999) “Pequena história dos assentamentos rurais no
Rio Grande do Sul: formação desenvolvimento”, in: Leonilde Servolo de Medeiros and Sérgio Leite (ed) A
formação dos assentamentos rurais no Brasil (processos sociais e políticas públicas), Porto Alegre: Editora
da Universidade, pp.11-60.
SPAROVEK, Gerd (2003) A Qualidade dos Assentamentos da Reforma
Agrária Brasileira, São
Paulo: Páginas e Letras Editora.
VEIGA, José Eli (2002) Cidades
Imaginárias, O Brasil é menos
urbano do que se calcula, Campinas, SP: Ed. Autores Associados, 2002.
______________
(2002) “Do crescimento agrícola ao desenvolvimento rural”, in: Desenvolvimento
em Debate (vol. II), org. Ana Célia Castro, Rio de Janeiro: Ed.
Mauad/BNDES, 2002, pp. 383-409.
______________ with graduate students: Arilson Favareto, Cristina M. A Azevedo, Gerson Bittencourt,
Karin Vecchiatti, Reginaldo Magalhães e Rogério Jorge (2001) O Brasil Rural precisa de uma estratégia de
desenvolvimento, Série
Textos para Discussão, número 1, NEAD, August 2001, (booklet).
______________ (2000) “Pobreza rural,
distribuição de riqueza e crescimento: a experiência brasileira”, in: Distribuição
de Riqueza e Crescimento Econômico, Edson Teófilo (org.), NEAD (Núcleo
de Estudos Agrários e Desenvolvimento Rural), Brasília, pp.173-200.
[1] Many thanks to Gerd Sparovek, Karin Vechiatti and Zander Navarro
for their helpful comments. on a draft.
[2] In Ponta Porã, State of Mato Grosso do Sul, in an area that used to be part of the old Fazenda Itamarati, exhibited for a long time as a Brazilian agribusiness efficiency model. But it was bought by former Minister Raul Jungmann to be part of agrarian reform after the agricultural collapse of Olacyr de Moraes, a banker and contractor who was at one point considered “The King of Soybeans”.
[3] Besides
these tools, FHC's administration used a few other actions to complement the
traditional agrarian reform mechanisms, such as “Banco da Terra”, “Cédula da
Terra”, and “Projeto Casulo” (“cocoon
project”). The first two are known
financing programs to purchase land that cannot be expropriated, differentiated
by the maximum value of loans and by the level of participation of the
communities involved. “Banco da Terra”
was successful only in the Southern region, whereas “Cédula da Terra” remained basically restricted to the Northeastern
region. “Projeto Casulo” aims at
generating jobs and revenue in rural regions close to towns or villages, by
settling and assisting small family farmers to develop different activities.
[4] Quilombos were hiding places of runaway slaves; many turned into communities existing up to the present day.
[5] This work, which had FAO’s support, turned into a book that best describes the results of the process: “Quality of Settlements in the Brazilian Agrarian Reform” (A Qualidade dos Assentamentos da Reforma Agrária Brasileira), by Gerd Sparovek (USP/MDA/FAO: 2003). It confirms and complements conclusions reached by Heredia et al. (2002), and also Leite (2002).