Brazil is a country where at present 32 million people are starving, and half of them live in a rural environment. In addition, another 65 million people barely survive with a very poor diet. One of the reasons of that situation is that the best lands are occupied by export monocultures, such as sugarcane, coffee, cotton, soy and orange.

 

At the same time, according to official statistics, some 30 million people migrated from the countryside to the cities between 1970 and 1990. The number of rural workers decreased 23 % between 1985 and 1996. Nowadays, over 77 % of the Brazilian population lives in the cities.

 

During the 1990s, the purchasing power of Brazilian workers fell significantly. Prices in many sectors went up while salaries went down, and the social effects of that were tremendous, particularly among the peasants, who became one of the most vulnerable sectors in Brazil.

 

The agricultural sector is huge in the country; however, the agrarian reform has not benefited peasants in the least; their rights as a working class are being ignored time and again while they witness how wealth piles up and concentrates in a few hands, particularly benefiting the international financial sector.

 

This new economic model, based on big plantations, monocultures, intensive agriculture and high technology, creates many contradictions and conflicts and leaves the majority of the population outside the labour market. The main characteristics of the economic model prevailing in the country are reflected in the huge number of multinational companies that lead the agricultural market. This is the result of the internationalisation of the capital, which sets the price of farm products according to international parameters. This is causing the dismantling of the public sector; and as the support of the State and its traditional services diminishes, peasants are losing access to the benefits coming from loans, price setting policies, insurances, technical assistance, research and even storage.

 

Between 1994 and 1998, 400,000 small farmers lost their lands and 800,000 rural workers lost their jobs. Only in the 1990s, 400,000 families (2 million people) were ejected from the countryside. Out of that amount, about 1,2 million were young people or children.

 

In that respect, 1 % of the landowners hold 44 % of the cultivable lands of the country, while 4,5 million rural workers do not have access to the land. On the other hand, 10 % of the richest population holds 50 % of the wealth produced, while 50 % have to get by with a scarce 12 %.

 

The exclusion signs of young people from the countryside are obvious: as a consequence of rural migrations, the lack of an agricultural policy aimed at small farmers, the inequality in the distribution of the land and the denial of social rights (education, culture...), they are losing their rural identity and their connection to the land, and have very few prospects for a decent life.