Br
azilian society faces, in the rural milieu, distinct problems needing different solutions. We have serious problems and emergencies that require urgent action. There are about 150,000 families of landless laborers living under black tarps, camping, fighting for the rights that are in the Constitution to have land to work. For this problem, the...
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Recent Videos/Audios
Occupy Brazil: The Landless Dig In
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | Brazilian Government | General | Monoculture | Neoliberalism | Agrarian Reform
By Nick Olle
September 20, 2012
In Brazil, less than two per cent of the population owns more than half of the nation’s territory. Over almost...
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | Brazilian Government | General | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | GMOs | Monoculture | Neoliberalism | Agrarian Reform
By Jose Coutinho Junior
The Minister of Agrarian Development (MDA), Pepe Vargas, in an interview with Carta Maior declared the decrease in the coming years of the number of families settled pursuant to agrarian reform.
The minister also claims that the number of families living in the encampments has decreased. For Alexandre Conceição, from the National Coordination of the MST, the statements mask the reality of the Brazilian countryside.
Check out the...
May 31, 2012 by Brasil do Fato
The three words above are not mere propaganda. Over the past ten years Brazilian agribusiness has taken over as the form of production in agriculture. It is a model of agricultural production, now subordinated to the interests of finance capital and transnational...
Transcription of the talk by João Pedro Stedile, of the MST, in the meeting between Dilma and representatives of civil society held on January 26 2012 during the Thematic Social Forum in Porto Alegre.
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | GMOs | Monoculture | Plans and Theories | Neoliberalism | Agrarian Reform | Brazilian Politics Society and Economy
By Luiz Felipe Albuquerque
Agriculture has undergone a major transformation in Brazil over the past 10 years, with the advancement of the agribusiness model. This model is based on: the production of monocultures on large estates; in an alliance of capitalist farmers, transnational corporations and financial capital; a mechanization that promotes expelling...
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | Brazilian Government | General | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | MST Victories | Plans and Theories | Agrarian Reform | MST Campaigns | MST Informas
The year is ending and again we have the feeling of accomplishment for all the struggles, activities, and alliances that we’ve built and engaged in with all the various sectors of the working class. In another difficult year we had to carry out great struggles against agribusiness that continues its offensive against our lands,...
With 15 votes, five requests for diligence and two abstentions, the National Technical Commission on Biosafety (CTNBio) approved on the 
morning of Thursday (September 15, 2011), the commercial release of transgenic soya, developed by researchers at Embrapa [Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation].
The request for release of the variety, resistant to...
Everywhere in the world large multinationals determine the political game. One of the biggest global players is Bayer AG, present in all countries. The former subsidiaries of IG Farben (BASF, Bayer and Hoechst) dominate the European chemical industry and have an annual volume of 90 billion euros. No government or political institution, can escape the influence of this...
The Guarani aquifer, the source of 100% of the water serving Riberao Preto, a city in the northeast of Sao Paulo state located 313km from the state capital, is threatened by herbicides.
This conclusion comes from a study done with data from the Riberao Preto Department of Water and Sewage (DAERP) in partnership...
By Luís Osete
Why is Brazil the largest consumer of agritoxins in the world? Are there any alternatives to the agricultural model which poisons crops in Vale do São Francisco? Until when will we continue having to swallow 5 liters of poison every year? Questions like these have driven more than 20 organizations – social movements,...
By Vivian Fernandes
The global market for pesticide sales could have a new leader within the year. At the current moment the Brazilian economy – with a rise in commodity prices and the valuation of the real against the dollar – should put Brazil in first place for collection of tax revenues on sales of...
By Benjamin Dangl
Early in the morning on May 24, in the northern Brazilian Amazon, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva got onto a motorcycle near the nature reserve they had worked on for over two decades. As the couple rode past the jungle they dedicated their lives to protecting, gunmen hiding near a bridge opened fire, killing them both.
Brazilian law enforcement officials said that the killing appeared to be the work of hired gunmen...
By João Márcio (Marabá, Pará)
After an overnight vigil, peasant movements, students, teachers from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) and settled families of the MST sealed off the Carajás railway bridge this Thursday. The bridge stands over the River Tocantins...
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | Food Sovereignty and Sustainability | Brazilian Politics Society and Economy
Agroextractivist José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo were...
The contamination of the Pardo River, in the interior of SP, agricultural pesticides can cripple their drinking water due to the costs of 
constructing a water treatment plant that would eliminate these substances.
The statement is from professor of chemistry Cristina Pereira Rosa Paschoalato of Unaerp (University of Ribeirao Preto...
By Vinicius Mansur
The "Permanent Campaign against Pesticides and Life" will be launched by the movements of rural workers and environmentalists on the World Health Day, Thursday, April 7, 2011.
According to the coordinator of the MST, Paola Pereira, acts will be launched in the main capitals of Brazil. In Brasilia, a...
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | Food Sovereignty and Sustainability | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | Agrarian Reform | MST Informas
The women of Via Campesina held a National Day of Women’s Struggle in light of March 8 - International Women’s Day – to denounce the
extreme gravity of...
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | History | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | GMOs | Monoculture | Agrarian Reform | MST and Working Class Unity
By Bianca Costa
On the morning of March 8, 2006, 1,800 women from Via Campesina carried out a major action against the monoculture of eucalyptus in Rio Grande do Sul.
Organized, women occupied the nursery tree farm of Aracruz Celulose, in Barra do Ribeiro,...
By Maria Aparecida 
Earlier on Thursday (March 3), about 600 women from Via Campesina and other social movements have closed part of Highway Cônego Domênico Rangoni, also known as Piaçaguera-Guaruja, which gives access to the industrial complex of Cubatão on the coast of São Paulo.
...
Over 1,000 women from the social movements of Ceará, the MST, the Movement of People's Councils and the Center of Popular Movements, made two marches to denounce the negative impacts to human health and the environment with excessive use of pesticides in Brazil and impact.
In Fortaleza, more than 600 women marched towards the Palace of the Abolition of the State Government. In Santa Quitéria, 500 women protest against the installation of mine Itataia1.
...
Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 3 (IPS) - Thousands of women farmers in Brazil demonstrated this week against the use of toxic weedkillers and 
pesticides on crops and in favour of agricultural techniques that protect their families' health.
Under the slogan "Women Against the Violence of Agribusiness and Agrotoxins; For Land...
Agribusiness | Agritoxins | Food Sovereignty and Sustainability | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | Agrarian Reform
Throughout Brazil, the women of Via Campesina triggered the Day of Struggles of Women to condemn the excessive use of pesticides by Brazilian cultivation, the responsibility of the agribusiness production model.
To date, six states are mobilized to denounce the harmful effects on health and the environment of the annual use of over a billion liters of poisons, according to data from the National Association of Industrial Products for Agricultural Defense.
Brazil...
By Benjamin Dangl, UK Guardian
Just days after Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was inaugurated on new year's day, thousands of activists from the Landless Farmers Movement (MST) took over three expanses of land and various government buildings, demanding the new president speed up the rate of...
Brazilian eucalyptus plantations of Stora Enso, a giant Finnish-Swedish reforestation company is involved in a serious conflict with local organizations, environmentalists and small farmers. The MST, in particular, is tired of the two faces of Stora Enso. Finnish public institutions have a considerable portion (35%) of the shares in Stora Enso[1], but the government refuses to intervene in the operations by Mika Rönkkö "Lying is what Stora Enso does best," said Joao Pedro Stédile, at MST...
by Hanna Nikkanen
Stora Enso, a Finnish-Swedish giant of the "forest" industry, is conquering Brazil at high speed. The action involves multiple problems, but neither the shareholders nor consumers seem to even bother. Could South America be the Wild West for the paper industry, based on eucalyptus? For nearly a decade, the exotic eucalyptus was the magnet that attracted the western giants of the forest and paper industry to the heat of land disputes, corruption and accusations of...
A Terra de Direitos - Organization for Human Rights (http://terradedireitos.org.br/) published a case study on the various human rights violations by Syngenta Seeds, multinational agribusiness corporation which produces genetically modified seeds and pesticides. The actions that violate include murder, physical and moral violence against landless rural workers, maintenance of private armed militias, carrying...
From information published by the National Association of Plant Protection (ANDEF) - an employers' organization that brings together companies in the agribusiness like Basf, Bayer, Down Agrosciences, Dupont, Monsanto and Syngenta – we prepared a summary on the use of poisons in Brazilian agriculture. The figures are worrying. While transnationals triumph with their profits, Brazil occupies the position of largest consumer of poisons in the world. The position, first occupied by the United...
By: Isabella Kenfield For Global Alternatives As Brazil's economy booms from rising agricultural commodity prices worldwide, conflicts over land in the Amazon--where the agricultural frontier is rapidly expanding--are also on the rise. At times, the region appears to be ungovernable for the administration of President Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva and the governing Workers' Party (PT), which face strong pressure to yield to the interests of regional, national and international agribusiness...
Syngenta is a multinational agribusiness corporation based in Basel, Switzerland. Syngenta was the first global group to focus exclusively on agribusiness products. According to Syngenta’s Web site (www.syngentaseeds.com), the company has over 19,000 employees. In 2005, Syngenta’s revenue was over US$ 8.1 billion. Syngenta Seeds Report Terra de Direitos August 30, 2006 1. Introduction Syngenta is a multinational...