News and Updates: Neoliberalism
In 2008, we wrote yet another chapter about the struggle between the two disputing projects in Brazilian agriculture. On one side, small and mid-sized agriculture that produces food for the Brazilian family table. On the other, the big national and transnational corporations and finance capital that produce soy, eucalyptus, sugar cane, and...
Agrofuels, like ethanol, are part of an agricultural model that does not produce food, but on the contrary, increases environmental damage through deforestation, burning sugarcane, and other social consequences like the use of slave labor on the plantations.
Instead, big groups of foreigners and agribusinesses, who receive voluminous aid...
The United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) announced that the number of people that go hungry in the world rose from 850 million to 925 million this year. What caused this? The increase in the price of food. And the poor are the hardest hit by the crisis.
The price of staple grains, such as corn, rice and soy, doubled...
Brazil’s civil society needs to start having a major discussion: a discussion about the exploration, production, and use of oil found in the pre-salt layer. The management of our natural resources – our oil, our minerals, our water, our land, and the like – should be controlled by the people, and administered on the basis of national interests...
NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Some 300 protesters blocked a key iron ore export railway belonging to mining giant Vale as nationwide protests against multinational corporations continued Thursday for a third day. Companhia Vale do Rio Doce SA said in a statement that farm workers started blocking the railway line that carries 70 cargo trains...
The Associated Press Tuesday, June 10, 2008 SAO PAULO, Brazil: Thousands of landless rural workers invaded dams, railways, plantations and corporate headquarters in a wave of protests across eight Brazilian states on Tuesday. Rogerio Homm, a coordinator with the Via Campesina activist group, said the protests are aimed at large corporations...
Protesters target seed company in Lisle May 9, 2008 The Lisle Sun By Eva McKendrick emckendrick@scn1.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...
By Mario Osava RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 24 (IPS) - It is a question of "national sovereignty, not xenophobia," said the president of Brazil’s land reform agency, INCRA, explaining the need to regulate foreign land ownership in Brazil. The biofuel frenzy has driven growing purchases of land in Brazil in the last few years, by local and foreign...
We begin this year by taking on an important battle for the development of our country around Tax Reform and reform of the current economic policy. The role of taxation is not just apportioning the tax burden among the various sectors of society but is also a basic tool for income distribution and helps to shape the project for the country that...
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 8 (Reuters) - A group of Brazilian landless peasants threatened on Monday to block a railroad run by mining giant CVRD and halt iron ore shipments from Carajas area in a protest to demand the company's renationalization. The radical leftist Landless Workers' Movement also said 3.6 million people voted for the return of CVRD...