Agro defends agrarian reform, but criticizes MST for invasions – 01/24/2024 – Power

Congressmen representing agribusiness say they defend agrarian reform, but condemn the practice of land invasions that has become a symbol of the MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement), which celebrated 40 years of existence this week.

Ruralists in general have always been the main sector of opposition to the MST and have already sponsored some CPIs in the National Congress, the last of which ended in September without voting on a final report.

Minister of Agriculture of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Tereza Cristina (PP-MS) says she sees crime in the invasion actions. For her, the movement should reinvent itself, focusing on improving the living conditions of the hundreds of thousands of settled families.

According to MapBiomas, the Brazilian area occupied by agriculture is 95 million hectares (2022 data), the equivalent of slightly more than the state of Mato Grosso — and similar to the area destined for agrarian reform in recent decades, around 90 million hectares. acre.

“I think the MST had to change its focus, it has to modernize, reinvent itself, making these settlements productive. Invading land is a crime, our Constitution says that private property is sacred, it’s one of the cornerstone clauses” , he states.

During the Bolsonaro administration, agrarian reform was linked to Agriculture, which promoted a paralysis of new expropriations and settlements, prioritizing a record delivery of property titles to settlers — a policy criticized by the MST for, according to them and among other points, facilitating the return of these lands for landowners.

“What the MST now has to do is demand that the land for those settled be titled, or do they want to continue with these people being protected by the movement? We wanted people who were on the land, but who owned their business, who could have dignity and that’s what the title brings to the vast majority”, says the current senator.

President of the powerful FPA (Agricultural Parliamentary Front), deputy Pedro Lupion (PP-PR) is more acidic in his criticisms.

“There’s nothing to celebrate [pelos 40 anos], is a criminal, riotous movement, which has a unique and exclusively political interest, which has never thought about agrarian reform, only about political growth and domination of a population that needs land. Unfortunately, a shame for Brazil”, says the parliamentarian.

Former president of the FPA, deputy Sergio Souza (MDB-PR) also criticizes the invasions promoted by the MST.

“We are not against agrarian reform, quite the opposite, agrarian reform is beneficial to the country, it is fair, it must be done. What we do not agree with is the invasion of property.”

Responsible for the FPA’s Property Rights committee, also federal deputy Lucio Mosquini (MDB-RO) adopts the same speech: he is in favor of agrarian reform, but against the MST’s methods.

“The MST’s biggest sin is precisely the entity’s social objective, which is the invasion of private, productive lands, private properties. If they were a movement demanding land, agrarian reform, an area of ​​land for them to work, I would I wouldn’t have that view.”

The issue of invasions was the subject of the press conference in which the CNA (Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil) presented an assessment of 2023 and perspectives for 2024.

The confederation’s technical director, Bruno Lucchi, listed land invasions as one of the reasons that affect producers’ profit margins.

“I highlight the case of legal uncertainty regarding invasions of rural properties, which this year, data we have until November, totals 71 types of invasions. This number is much higher than the 62 invasions we have had over the last 4 years , it is a problem that was basically alleviated and has returned with much more force”, stated Lucchi. “This took the peace of mind of many producers who, even when it came to investment, put their foot on the brakes.”

The peak of land invasions in Brazil occurred in 1998 and 1999, during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) government, according to data compiled annually by the Dom Tomás Balduino Documentation Center, of the CPT (Pastoral Land Commission).

There were almost 600 in each of those two years. In 2000, the government issued a provisional measure that prevented the expropriation of invaded areas, which resulted in a reduction in MST actions.

With Lula in power, the measure was discarded and occupations began to grow again (around 350 per year, in his first two terms). These numbers dropped until reaching an average of less than 50 invasions during the Bolsonaro government.

Under Lula 3, the CPT says that in the first half of 2023 alone there were 71 land occupations. Data for the remainder of the year has not yet been released.

Professor and sociologist Zander Navarro also says he no longer sees any reason for the MST to behave as it did in its first decades of existence.

“The question that had to be asked from 2010 onwards, more or less, was: what are we going to do with this multitude of small rural producers who are in the settlements? How can we develop a group of politicians who can guarantee them more permanence in the activity, more income, more jobs, more technology, more inclusion, in different markets?”

Zander says that this question has never been asked and that all governments have washed their hands of this matter. “It’s as if they said: ‘You who won a piece of land, turn around’.”

The scholar assesses that, broadly speaking, a good part of the rural settlements from São Paulo to the south of the country have achieved some type of productive consolidation and are continuing, while from Minas Gerais to the Northeast and North “there is no denying it, there this land distribution process was a failure”.

Sociologist and professor at UnB (University of Brasília) Sérgio Sauer is of the opinion that the MST knew how to reinvent itself to a certain extent.

“The MST took a national political decision back in 2006, 2007, and agroecology has been the main banner of change from a political-strategic point of view. The MST’s decision to have agroecology as its banner of struggle, but also as practices agricultural production, is an important historical milestone in this search for more sustainable rural development in Brazil.”