Ruralist caucus grows in the Senate – 06/07/2023 – Environment

Driven by the extreme right, the ruralist group gained strength in the Senate and managed to attract more than half of the parliamentarians. The number of senators reached 47 this year, compared to 39 in the previous legislature (2019) and compared to 27 in 2015.

Despite being made up of parliamentarians from both Houses, the bench has achieved projection in recent years due to the noise of deputies.

With the support of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), the articulation gained traction and led to the approval of guidelines considered a priority for the sector.

Without the same influence in the Senate, the main bills, however, ended up blocked in the House.

Now, the caucus is mobilized to try to change this scenario, and approve at least three guidelines: the PL for environmental licensing, the one for pesticides – known by critics as the PL for poison – and the one for land regularization.

Approved in 2021 by the Chamber, the PL for environmental licensing has practically stopped since it reached the Senate, but was discussed in a public hearing between the Environment and Agriculture committees last Wednesday (31).

Another topic that entered the radar of senators is the time frame, approved by the Chamber of Deputies last week. The government counts on the Senate to block the thesis that restricts indigenous lands to the areas that were occupied until the date of enactment of the 1988 Constitution.

Political director of the FPA (Frente Parlamentar Agropecuária) in the Senate, former Minister of Agriculture under Bolsonaro and leader of the PP, Senator Tereza Cristina (MS) has headed a good part of the debates and tried to facilitate the participation of colleagues on the bench.

The senator is the rapporteur for the licensing PL at the Agriculture Commission and is also trying to unblock the vote on the pesticide PL, which has divided the Lula (PT) government since the transition. The expectation is that the text will be discussed in a public hearing at the Environment Commission.

“I think things will move forward. President Rodrigo [Pacheco (PSD-MG)] was very emphatic: this matter needs to be voted on. You have to come up with a solution. Whether yes or no, but he has to walk”, said Tereza Cristina to the report.

The president of the FPA, federal deputy Pedro Lupion (PP-PR), recognizes that the arrival of the former minister to the Senate favors the negotiations. Lupion assesses that the last elections also boosted the sector’s agenda.

“I think the polarization in politics, right and left, and the renewal that there were in these 27 new vacancies [de senadores] made many agricultural parliamentarians candidates and elected”, he says.

“But we have many senators who have no direct relationship with the agro, but who work with us and help us on a day-to-day basis. This is the case of Marcos Pontes, himself [Sergio] live, the [Hamilton] Mourão. Names that do not have this clear and direct connection with agricultural production and are helping us with the agenda.”

For Professor Mariana Chaguri, from the Center for Rural Studies at Unicamp (State University of Campinas), agribusiness managed to bring together other interests, and that is precisely what helps to explain the growth of the ruralist group.

“It’s a way of building a worldview. That’s why you’re galvanizing not only actors strictly linked to agribusiness from an economic point of view, but actors who, politically, share views on the environment, labor rights, food,” he says. .

“The right to guns goes a long way through the agribusiness debate. There is an economic force, which is not negligible, it never was. But this overrepresentation [representação excessiva] Politics has to do with a different set of interests and views on Brazilian society.”

The mobilization of the ruralist caucus in Congress puts pressure on the federal government and tries to intimidate even the STF (Federal Supreme Court). In recent days, the Chamber approved the urgency of the timeframe and, with the help of the Senate, dismantled the ministries of the Environment and Indigenous Peoples.

With the agro agenda on the rise, only three states do not have a senator as a member of the ruralist caucus: Amapá, Amazonas and Ceará.

On the other hand, in nine of the 27 units of the federation, all three senators are part of the front. This is the case of Santa Catarina, Paraná, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantins, Roraima, Acre and Sergipe.

Chaguri assesses, however, that this “heterogeneous” expansion of the ruralist group raises doubts about how the parliamentarians will reconcile different interests.

“The expansion brings a lot of strength, but it also brings interests that do not belong to the producers, whether big or small. You have the producer who needs to be accountable for the environmental issue, otherwise he will not export. And you have the person who is grabbing land”, he says.

“Agribusiness represents a third of the GDP. And we are not talking about a third of the Senate, we are talking about a parliamentary group that ensures that you do not have an agenda in the Senate, related to agribusiness or not, that it will not pass a little for them. It’s almost a majority block”, he adds.

In this Tuesday’s (6th) plenary session, Senator Eliziane Gama (PSD-MA), coordinator of the environmentalist group, made an appeal for the Senate not to approve the urgency of the time frame.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}