Urban and rural organizations highlight that the current model was “imposed” by the transnational capital and has managed to turn everything into tradable goods, including food, water, land, biodiversity and seeds.

“The only aim of this model is to generate profits for the big companies, transnational corporations and banks. We need to build a new agricultural model based on the permanent search for a more egalitarian and just society”, state the organizations.

The organizations link agribussines to slave work and child exploitation, and state that in most fields dedicated to monoculture plantations, basic labor conditions are not respected. They also criticize a bill that will regularize illegal lands currently exploited by Stora Enso and the Moon sect.

Works on Sao Francisco River; water privatization to benefit companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Suez; the building of mega-hydroelectric plants; and negotiable carbon credits, are just some of the issues denounced by La Via Campesina Brazil.

In terms of proposals, the organizations reaffirm the concept of food sovereignty, used by the organizations since their meeting in Rome in 1996, and propose regulations to avoid water, forests and land ownership concentration.

They highlight the need for agriculture to be controlled by Brazilian people and be based on the production of food, through the creation of agro-industrial cooperatives. Other issues dealt with by the organizations include policies to stimulate diversified production; the fight against agrotoxics; defense of “zero deforestation” policies in the Amazon forest; conservation of native seeds; implementation of a new energy project; and the demarcation of indigenous areas in Mato Grosso do Sul, among other things.

Photo: http://brasil.indymedia.org