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...
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Occupy Brazil: The Landless Dig In
By Nick Olle
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...
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...
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...
Agribusiness | Brazilian Government | GMOs | Monoculture | Seed Control | Agrarian Reform | Oppression of MST and Social Movements
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....
A landmark lawsuit filed on March 29 in US federal court seeks to invalidate Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seeds and to 
prohibit the company from suing those whose crops become genetically contaminated.
The Public Patent Foundation filed suit...
By Riquieli Capitani
A newsletter of the Federation of Agriculture of the State of Paraná (Faep) announced a reduction of 10 km to 1,200 meters of the buffer zone of Iguaçu National Park, later this month, through an ordinance of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation.
Thus, large plantation owners and agri-business would be allowed...
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,...
Since the creation of the National Technical Commission (CTNBio) in 2005, biotech multinationals have benefited with consecutive approvals without exception of all of the petitions to release transgenic varieties in Brazil. Between 2005 and the end of 2009, CTNBio will give full reign to the commercial planting of two different varieties of soybean, ten varieties of corn, and six varieties of cotton, and will release a variety of rice of the multinational Bayer, which will put into risk the...
Protesters target seed company in Lisle May 9, 2008 The Lisle Sun By Eva McKendrick emckendrick [at] scn1 [dot] com About a dozen activists May 2 staged a protest at the Syngenta Seeds facility in Lisle, seeking a response from its Swiss headquarters on alleged environmental and human rights violations in Brazil. The protesters, members of a group called Friends of MST (the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement)...
by Isabella Kenfield Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) On March 7th—International Women's Day—dozens of Brazilian women occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, destroying the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-modified (GM) corn. Participants, members of the international farmers' organization La Vía Campesina, stated in a note that the act was to protest the Brazilian...
Agribusiness | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | GMOs | Seed Control | Oppression of MST and Social Movements | MST Informas
Dear friend of the MST,
In this special edition we would like to share with you the struggle of Via Campesina against the transnational company Syngenta Seeds, of Switzerland, and denounce the number of crimes which this company has committed against humanity in the Brazilian territory:
1. SUMMARY EXECUTION CRIMES AGAINST THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE:
On Sunday October 21st , at approximately 1:30 pm, after the reoccupation of the area, which took place in the early morning,...
by Isabella Kenfield and Roger Burbach In the Brazilian state of Paraná, Valmir Mota de Oliveira of Via Campesina, an international peasant organization, was shot twice in the chest at point blank range by armed gunmen on an experimental farm of Syngenta Seeds, a multinational agribusiness corporation. The cold blooded murder took place on Sunday, October 21 after Via Campesina had occupied the site because of Syngenta’s illegal development of genetically modified (GM) seeds. Via Campesina...
Agribusiness | Food Sovereignty and Sustainability | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | GMOs | Agrarian Reform | Oppression of MST and Social Movements
MST's Valmir Mota de Oliveira, aka "Keno" On 10/21/2007, at 1:30 p.m., a Via Campesina encampment located at Syngenta’s experimental GMO farm in Santa Tereza do Oeste (Paraná), Brazil, was attacked by an...