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March on Brazilian Embassy - April 9, 2012
By Felipe Milanez in Washington
The Embassy of Brazil in Washington, a modernist building that contrasts with the classical properties of the beautiful Embassy Row, the sector of embassies of the U.S. capital, hosted on Monday April 9th a march that brought together about one...
The rural social movements, which held a meeting earlier this week in Brasilia, launched a manifesto in defense of agrarian reform, rural development with the end of inequality, production and access to healthy foods, for agro-ecology and ensuring expansion of social rights for rural workers.
...
By Luiz Zarref
After the vote on the rural manifesto, the text, written by Congressman Aldo Rebelo in the House of Representatives in June 2010 that details the deconstruction of the Forestry Code, was forwarded to the Senate.
Last December, a new text was approved in the Senate, which had...
By Vanessa Ramos
It was just after 5:30 am when Francisco Pereira, his hands showing signs of years of hard labor in construction, was getting ready for another day's work when he was surprised by five police officers (MPs). His wife and three children were violently torn from their beds without explanation. The police pushed his daughter, who was a few months...
During the reoccupation of the Rio dos Santos estate in Bom Jesus das Selves in Maranhão last Saturday (25), a pregnant woman of six months was knocked down by estate owner and land thief, José Osvaldo Damião. She ended up losing her baby.
An elderly man of 72 years was among other workers assaulted by the landowner and his gunmen.
Fagnea was taken to the municipal hospital...
The votes are in! Vale, the Brazilian mining company, has been voted the worst company in the world. Vale received 25,042 votes edging out Tepco, Japan’s large energy company which blatantly disregarded structural safety of its nuclear plants resulting in the post-tsunami disaster.
While visiting the MST Agrarian Reform Store in the public market of Porto Allegre (RS), Jose Graziano da Silva, General Director of the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) saw the successful products derived from settlements for agrarian reform and family farming.
Amid the more than 250 products sold by the...
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...
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,...
Obituary: it died on the night of Tuesday, 12/6/11, the victim of being run-over multiple times by Congress. The body will spend the summer in the morgue, as some propose its dismemberment before the ceremony in the Planalto. Cruelty can only be avoided if deputies and senators forged in the struggle for democratization take...
The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) received the 2011 Food Sovereignty Prize. Inaugurated in 2009, the Food 
Sovereignty Prize, awarded by the Community Food Security Coalition at its 15th annual conference, held this year in Oakland California. The prize recognizes leaders in the global movement for...
MST leader Elias Araujo was in the US to accept, on behalf of the MST the Food Sovereignty Prize for 2011, given by the Community Food 
Security Coalition. On November 9 2011, Elias was ased to address...
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...
by Gerson Teixeira
Groups representing rural workers are negotiating measures with the government which would ease rural-credit debts owed by settled and family farmers.
These negotiations have been in ongoing since 2003, when the debts belonging to these groups began to be covered by official renegotiation instruments. These...
La Via Campesina (a sister organization of MST) presents a political platform to the federal government of Brazil which includes emergency measures, medium term measures, and strategies for the development and strengthening of family-based and peasant agriculture. The proposals are listed below.
...
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 Raumi Souza
The second annual Fair of Family Agriculture took place between the 22nd - 24th of July in Itaetê located in the Chapada Diamantina region of Bahia. The event, in conjunction with the Traditional Farmers Festival of Itaetê, was conducted by MST, Bahia for Agricultural Development (...
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,...
In Amazonia, 299 square kilometers of forest were degraded in March of this year, an increase of 35% compared to the same period of 2010, when the area affected was 220 square kilometers. This data from the Deforestation Alert System (Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento or SAD) was included in the last report from the...
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...
The report amending the Forest Code, presented by congressman Aldo Rebelo (Communist Party of Brazil [PCdoB]) and approved by the House of Representatives Special Commission benefits the large landholders of Agribusiness.
Even more worrisome for Agrarian Reform is the amnesty granted to all rural...
By Rafael Soriano
President Dilma Rouseff came to Alagoas to launch the program “Water for everyone” and an agroindustry producing manioc flour. The day took a political tone when the social movements linked to the fight for the land – the MST, the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da...
At 88 years of age, the bishop emeritus of Goiás, Dom Tomas Balduíno, lives in the Dominican Monastery of St. Jude Thaddeus in Goiânia, but travels throughout the world at the invitation of groups who ask him to speak about the latifúndio, monoculture, and water....
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...
Military Police (PM) resorted to fierce and brutal measures on Wednesday May 18 in their efforts to clear a section of land in the Nova Esperança neighourhood in Barra do Riacho, Aracruz. The Nova Esperança neighbourhood was formed following the occupation of an area in the Barra do Riacho district, and it now contains 330 families (1,600 inhabitants), among which 550 are children.
The war-like measures to which the PM resorted were realized...
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...
Agroextractivist José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo were...
The Chamber of Deputies decided today that Brazil should not be the country of the future. By 410 votes to only 63, federal deputies approved changes to the Brazilian Forest Code that are set to compromise the country's biodiversity as well as the sustainability of Brazilian agriculture. “Brazil woke up this morning with news of the murder of one of the Amazon Rainforest's strongest advocates,” announced Paulo Adario, director...
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.