Land reform builds sustainable food systems, sustainable agriculture, and environmental conservation: Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, or in Portuguese Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is the largest social movement in Latin America with more than two million members organized in 23 out 27 states, and has influenced the creation of other rural social movements worldwide. In a country where 1.6% of the landowners control roughly half (46.8%) of the land on which crops could be grown and just 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable lands, 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, and 180,000 encamped families currently await government recognition, rooted in a provision in the Brazilian Constitution which says land that remains unproductive should be used for a “larger social function". Until the 1960s, Brazilians were predominantly agrarian with most living as tenant labourers on huge farms. When the Brazilian military government industrialized and mechanized agriculture in the 1960s, workers were replaced by machines and agrochemicals and millions of poor, rural workers and their families were expelled from the land on which they had been living.

Most of these landless families migrated to the major urban centers of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, but a few landless families remained in the countryside and in the early 1980s in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, began to organize and struggle for land reform. The MST was officially founded in 1984, during the 1st Meeting of the Landless Rural Workers in Cascavel, Paraná, and in 1985, officially organized itself at the national level at the 1st National Congress of the Landless.

By occupying large, unproductive tracts of land, the MST began to force the government to expropriate land from large landowners and distribute it to the rural poor. Gradually, the MST began to understand that winning land was important, but they also needed access to credit, housing, technical assistance, schools, and healthcare. Today, as a result of MST’s work, there are about 400 associations in the areas of production, commercialization and services, 49 agricultural and cattle-raising cooperatives with 2,299 participating families, 32 service cooperatives with 11,174 direct partners, two regional commercialization cooperatives and three credit cooperatives with 6,521 members. Ninety-six small and medium-sized cooperatives process fruit, vegetables, dairy products, grains, coffee, meat, and sweets. Such MST economic enterprises generate employment, income, and revenue that indirectly benefits about 700 small towns in Brazil’s interior.

About 160,000 children study from 1st to 4th grade in the 1800 public schools on MST settlements. About 3900 educators paid by the town are developing a pedagogy specifically for the rural MST schools. In conjunction with UNESCO and more than 50 universities, the MST is developing a literacy program for approximately 19,000 teenagers and adults in the settlements. There are currently education and teaching courses at seven universities to train new teachers, and training in managing settlements and cooperatives. In 2001, a nursing course was started, and in 2002, a communications course for MST participants.

MST developed an environmental education program for leaders, teachers, and technical experts in the settlements and plans a technical environmental school. In collaboration with the Cuban government, 48 MST members are studying medicine at the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba. To preserve the natural environment and human health, landless families introduced Bionatur seeds, produced without pesticides, herbicides or chemicals, in the fall of 1999. Families have also worked to preserve forests and to produce herbal medicines.

This story adapted from materials found on the website of the MST.

 

For more stories about literacy, see:

Literacy classes transform women's lives in western Afghanistan

Using mother tongue improves learning for Ngbaka children in Congo

Haitians organize democratically to solve their own problems

Reading club grows into literacy program for 28 Solomon Islands villages

Rebuilding on Pinatubo with ash from 1991 eruption

Unique program empowers communities in 9 African countries


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