Abstract
The process of re-peasantization in Brazil occurs primarily through the peasant struggle for land and agrarian reform. Adopting a geographic method and using territorialization as a central axis of study, this article analyzes the history of peasant formation, particularly focusing on the formation of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), the peasant movement that has most contributed to the process of recreating the peasantry through land occupations. The process of re-peasantization occurring over the last 30 years is supported by data showing that more than a million families have been settled through agrarian reform. However, these fractional territorial gains have not eliminated the subordination of peasants by capitalized land rent. Using data from the most recent Agricultural Census, we highlight the situation of dependence to which Brazilian peasants are submitted. The hegemony of agribusiness has provoked a reflux in the peasant struggle for land and agrarian reform, which currently finds itself stagnant. The greatest challenge for peasant movements is the creation of a development model for their territories which would enable them to recuperate the process of re-peasantization.
Introduction
The idea and process of re-peasantization are central to the study of the agrarian question, as capitalist development simultaneously promotes the destruction and recreation of the peasantry. It is within this contradictory process that re-peasantization in Brazil must be situated and understood: as a process of creation and recreation of peasants determined by the actions of peasants themselves, and of capital. There are two forms of re-peasantization: the first occurs by the struggle for land and agrarian reform (Fernandes 2000; Moyo 2007; Moyo and Yeros 2005), occurring predominately through the actions of peasant movements. The second occurs by means of the capitalist market through the purchase and sale of land, which can also be promoted by public policies such as those implemented with the support of the World Bank in several countries (Ramos Filho 2008, Sauer and Pereira 2006). These processes have deeply marked the trajectory of re-peasantization.
The current article examines the process of creation and re-creation of the peasantry in Brazil from a geographical and historical perspective, focusing on the role of the peasant movement that has most contributed to re-peasantization, the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). The process of territorialization, a concept not commonly used in sociological and economic analyses, is central to the analysis presented here. Land, production units, and peasant and capitalist land holdings are understood as fractions of the territories of countries. These territories are in dispute due to the distinct social relations and development models respectively promoted by peasants and capitalists. As each of these types of social relations needs a territory within which to develop, the continuation of the peasantry and capitalism effectively foment an ongoing conflict over land and resources.
These disputes have led to struggles, massacres and wars, as evidenced by several examples in the history of the formation of peasants in Brazil. In fact, there is a geopolitical use of land and territories that is becoming increasingly more significant due to recent changes in the agrarian situation, marked by the expansion of agro-fuel production and recurrent food crises. The hegemony of agribusiness, effectively consolidated in the 1990s, endangers the existence of the peasantry, while at the same time keeps a significant part of it subordinate. This reality brings new political and theoretical challenges. It is not only a struggle for land but also a struggle for sustainable food systems and the production of quality food products. The industrialization of agriculture, the intensive use of pesticides, and the expansion of transgenic crops have generated environmental problems and negatively impacted public health. These elements, central to the agrarian question in the twenty-first century, build upon classic elements, such as inequality and land concentration, which have persisted since the sixteenth century.
Organized into three main parts, this article first discusses the process through which the peasantry in Brazil has been formed. It then examines the struggle for land and agrarian reform as a process of re-peasantization. Finally, it presents an analysis based on data from the latest Agricultural Census, in order to illuminate the conditions of subordination to which the peasantry are subject.
The Formation of the Peasantry in Brazil
The history of the formation of the Brazilian peasantry is marked by struggles and peasant wars, in disputes over territory and models of agricultural development. The social conflicts occurring in the countryside in the current century mark a continuity of a capitalist model of development implemented for over five centuries. Land concentration, the struggle for land and the hegemony of capitalist agriculture are key elements of this continuity. The land occupations realized by the MST and other peasant movements are actions of resistance in the face of increasing land concentration and against exploitation and oppression that mark the historic struggle for land. Through the struggle for land, peasants seek to attain the basic conditions for a dignified life and a more equitable and just society. Intrinsic to the process of the destruction and reconstruction of peasants, or re-peasantization are five centuries of persisting latifúndios, land struggles and peasant organization.
Since the arrival of Portuguese colonizers in 1500, Brazil’s history has been marked by the invasion and usurpation of indigenous territory, slavery and the subordination of the peasantry in the process of producing capitalist territory. The formation of the peasantry began with the struggle against slavery, against expropriation and exploitation, which resulted in the creation of territorial disputes that have continued until the present. These struggles characterize the history of peasants and indigenous peoples and the defence of their territories. In Brazil, indigenous peoples have never been considered peasants, although they have always contributed to the formation of a Brazilian people through miscegenation with African slaves and European and Asian immigrants. It is this intersection of peoples and ethnicities that initiated the formation of a unique Brazilian peasantry. The ceaseless struggles and wars of resistance of indigenous peoples, occurring one after another, or concurrently and in constant confrontation with capitalism, have shaped the memory that helps us to understand the process of re-peasantization.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries close to 350,000 indigenous people were enslaved. The hunt of indigenous peoples by colonial powers in order to enslave them was met by various movements of resistance, such as the Confederation of Tamoios and the War of the Potiguara (see Figure 1). A great battle in the fight against slavery took place in the region that now marks the frontier of South Brazil, shared with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. In this territory, disputed by Portugal and Spain, religious missions were organized by Jesuit priests. The Thirty Guaraní Peoples (Trinta Povos Guaranis) lived in this territory on commonly shared land, and each Guaraní village had a sizable population of between 1,500 and 12,000 members. Facing constant attacks by slave hunters and the armies of Spain and Portugal, the Guaraní maintained their resistance until exhaustion and eventual defeat. The final blow came in 1756, with a bloody massacre that led to the death of Sepé Tiaraju, a Guaraní leader who has become a symbol of indigenous resistance. At that time, the indigenous population in Brazil had been almost decimated and indigenous slavery was being substituted by African slaves (Prezia and Hoornaert 1989: 91–99).
In 1570, at the beginning of the colonial period, over 50 sugar mills had been established using slave labour. In 1584, around 15,000 African slaves toiled on sugarcane plantations. By 1597, the beginnings of a quilombo—a territory inhabited principally by escaped African slaves, but also by some indigenous people and free workers— had developed in the region of Palmares. Located approximately 70 kilometres from the coastline, in an area that today is the frontier region between the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco, Palmares was Brazil’s largest quilombo (see Figure 1). It comprised of several different villages—including Acotirene, Andalaquituche, Zumbi, Tabocas, Osenga, Subupira, Macaco, Aqualtume, Dambranga, Amaro and others—which were socially organized forming the Union of Palmares (União dos Palmares). The respective settlements were formed by nuclei of housing, wherein more than 1,500 houses were protected by palisades. On these lands, the people of Palmares cultivated crops of corn, beans, cassava and sugarcane; raised chickens, hunted and fished. By 1670, it is estimated that some 20,000 people lived in this territory. Canga Zumba and Zumbi were the principal leaders of Palmeres (Funari 1996: 26–37).
Quilombos, like Palmares, were territories of resistance and faced incessant attacks during the sixteenth century. From 1602 until 1694, Palmeres resisted these brutal attacks. In 1694, however, the army of gunman Domingos Jorge Velho attacked and destroyed Zumbi’s army, razing the entire territory and massacring its inhabitants. Palmares is now widely recognized as one of the country’s great struggles of resistance against the most cruel and inhumane form of exploitation: slavery. For three centuries, until the abolishment of slavery in1888, revolts and struggles of resistance occurred throughout Brazil; many of these were by quilombos that had been established in different parts of the country. Presently, in the twenty-first century, many of the remaining quilombos have been formally recognized by the Brazilian government and have become peasant territories.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Brazilian capitalism needed free labour in order to develop, and thus required an end to slave labour. It is important to remember that free labour had always existed, even during slavery. Among these free workers were smallholders, agregados, and blacks. The smallholders were small landowners or squatters; the agregados were squatters who worked on nearby large estates; and the blacks were former slaves who for different reasons had been freed or had bought their freedom. The end of slavery and the expansion of free labour promoted wage labour. Subordination began to occur through the sale of one’s labour power to large landholders—the capitalists. In order to further expand the free labour force, the government incentivized the immigration of peasants from diverse countries, such as Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain. Slaves became free because they regained control over their own labour power; the immigrants were free only because they possessed and controlled their own labour power. If, for the freed slaves, labour power was what was gained through emancipation, for the immigrants labour power was all they had left; neither had access to land (Martins 1986: 16–17). As such, the struggle for freedom and liberty now unfolded, simultaneously, alongside the struggle for land. The black Afro-Brazilian, the white European and the indigenous native converged to form the Brazilian peasantry. In constant struggle, the peasantry was being destroyed and recreated by the expansion of capitalist development, and in the process also recreating itself.
Free labourers often worked as bondage workers on large farms, with their bondage ending only after a period of 38 years of service. The Land Law of 1850 instituted the principle of private property and determined that access to land was only possible through purchases in money. The latifúndio, or large landholding—a remnant of the colonial and monarchic eras—became a salient feature of the Brazilian Republic. In this context, there were two main options that remained for landless workers (that is, former slaves and immigrants): to work on large farms in order to save and buy land, or to occupy already enclosed lands which, in large part, had been illegally obtained by landowners through the falsification of land title documents. In the struggle against the private enclosure of land, there emerged diverse forms of resistance. In Bahia, peasants and former slaves, followers of Antônio Conselheiro, ended their pilgrimage and established the village of Canudos (see Figure 1). Antônio Conselheiro and his followers formed a peasant movement that opposed the established order of submission imposed by the latifundiários, and was declared an enemy of the state (Martins 1981).
The war of Canudos was one of the first examples of the organization of peasant resistance in Brazil. Antônio Conselheiro and his followers settled on a farm in Canudos in 1893, calling the place Belo Monte. The economic organization of the settled community was realized through cooperative work, essential to the reproduction of the community. Everyone had the right to land and developed a mode of family production, ensuring a common fund reserved for use by the more vulnerable segments of the population, particularly the elderly and disabled. Approximately 10,000 people lived in Canudos—a population equivalent to the largest cities in Bahia at the time. The settlement was continuously attacked by military expeditions coming from all over Brazil. Over 5,000 soldiers fought against the peasants. From October 1896, the people of Canudos were able to defend against attacks by the Brazilian Armed Forces, until the final siege and massacre of the population in 1897 (Cunha 1982).
While the nineteenth century closed with a war waged against peasants by the Brazilian army, the following century opened with yet another. In the first decade of the twentieth century, in the border region of the southern Brazilian states of Paraná and Santa Catarina, another peasant movement emerged. In 1908, the government made a large concession to the Brazil Railway Company—a North American corporation—of a strip of land 30 kilometres wide for the construction of a railway stretching from São Paulo to Rio Grande. This was one of the first examples of foreign land grabbing in Brazil in the twentieth century. For the realization of this mega-project, the lands traversed by the railway were exploited by the company, and thousands of families where forcefully dispossessed. In 1912, in Campos Novos, Santa Catarina, a peasant movement was formed; by 1914 the movement was comprised of more than 15,000 people. The peasant families that resisted expropriation by the company were attacked by gunmen of Brazil Railway Company and troops of the Brazilian Armed Forces. The diverse localities of resistance that formed in the region become known as Contestado (Martins 1981).
Accusing the government of killing peasants and workers, and handing land over to foreign companies, peasants began to attack the large farm holdings and cities and took control of parts of the railway. The final battle took place in 1916, when 7,000 armed forces, thousands of police officers, and 300 gunmen launched a series of attacks. Aircraft were used to survey lands and identify the location of peasant strongholds. Trapped by the encircling forces, the peasants were unable to access supplies, thereby marking the end of the peasant resistance (Derengoski 1987). In the same manner as Canudos, Contestado was vanquished; completely destroyed. Those massacred were peasants who believed it to be possible to overcome the iron-grip that large landholders exercised in the Brazilian countryside.
In their process of formation, peasants have always confronted or been faced down by large landowners. In the mid-twentieth century the struggle for land and agrarian reform acquired new features, taking on new forms in the continual process of the recreation of the peasantry or re-peasantization. The formation of the Peasant Leagues (Ligas Camponesas) began around 1945 with the help of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), upon which they were dependant. In 1947, the government of President Dutra declared the PCB to be illegal and embarked on a campaign of violent repression of the Peasant Leagues. Yet, they remerged in 1954 in the state of Pernambuco, this time as an autonomous organization. They expanded into 13 states, organizing a myriad of meetings and congresses, and strengthening peasant organization. The Leagues played a defining role in the struggle for radical agrarian reform as a means to end land concentration; peasants held their ground and began to realize land occupations. In 1954, the PCB created the Union of Peasants and Rural Workers (ULTAB), with the aim of coordinating the peasant associations and creating the conditions necessary to form a political alliance between workers and peasants. In Rio Grande do Sul, in the 1960s, the Landless Agriculturalists’ Movement (MASTER) was formed. With the military coup in 1964, these movements were annihilated. The military dictatorship in Brazil lasted from 1964 to 1985 (Fernandes 2000).
The Struggle for Agrarian Reform: Re-peasantization
In the mid-twentieth century, the Brazilian peasantry found itself facing a new challenge: the advance of the modernization of agriculture characterized by the confluence of agricultural and industrial systems. This process represented the first phase in the formation of agribusiness in Brazil. Denominated ‘conservative modernization’ (Graziano da Silva 1981), this process exacerbated the situation of extreme land concentration in Brazil, and only intensified the inequality that existed between capitalist agriculture and peasant agriculture. In the following decades, market, financial, and technological systems coalesced with agro-industrial systems consolidating the formation of agribusiness as the model of development of capitalist agriculture.
The military regime created a series of instruments for the expansion of capitalist agriculture, instituting various policies of land concessions to large corporations, principally for the appropriation of land in the Amazon region (Oliveira 1987, 1988). The annihilation of peasant movements occurred concomitantly with the establishment of trade unions which were defended by the Catholic Church, political parties and the federal government. Conditions were created to institutionalize peasant organizations and subordinate them to government control. This process began in 1962, with the regulation of rural unionization, introduced with the intention of transforming peasant organizations into unions that could later form federations and be integrated into a confederation. The Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and the Catholic Church wrestled with peasant organizations, trying to rein them in and control them through means of subordination, with the hope of having political control over the future confederation. In December 1963, in an agreement between these institutions, the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) was created, and consolidated itself as an independent peasant institution (Medeiros 1989).The various attempts to eradicate peasant movements ultimately proved to be unsuccessful, since they were continually being reborn in different forms, thus proving re-peasantization to be a process with significant popular support. Not only was re-peasantization a form of resistance, it was also an inherent element of capitalist agricultural development.
Emerging in the 1960s, Christian-based Communities (CEBs) were important social spaces wherein workers encountered conditions conducive to organizing and fighting for their rights and against injustice. By the mid-1970s, they had been established all across the country, in both rural and urban areas. Through the popularization of the teachings of Liberation Theology, these communities became spaces of political socialization, liberation and popular organization. In 1975, the Catholic Church created the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT). Working in conjunction with parishes from the outskirts of cities and in rural communities, the CPT became the principal organizer of the new peasant movements that emerged during the military regime, in what can be considered a new phase of re-peasantization.
In order to suppress the struggle for land and avoid carrying out an agrarian reform that would have redistributed lands to peasant families, consecutive military governments worked to restrict the advance of the peasant movement. It was precisely the severity and extent of political oppression that led to the emergence of a new peasant movement in Brazil: The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). This is a contradiction that can also be understood using the very logic inherent in capitalist development in agriculture. Capital, even though it constitutes the hegemonic social relation, does not configure only one social relation, that is, wage labour. In the process of unequal and contradictory development and expansion, capital both destroys the peasantry and promotes re-peasantization. This is one way to understand the genesis of the MST, but the principal way is through the movement’s own actions.
The struggle for survival has long been the aim of peasant resistance. In 1978, 110 landless families began to organize, and on 7 September 1979, they occupied Macali farm in the municipality of Ronda Alta, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul (see Figure 1). This land occupation inaugurated the process of the formation of the MST. The lands of the Macali farm were remnants of land struggles that had taken place in the 1960s, when MASTER had organized encampments in the region. The history of the struggle for access and control over these lands had been recorded in the memory of the peasants who were now participating in an even greater struggle: the struggle for the restoration of democracy (Medeiros 1989).
In the early 1980s, several land occupations took place in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, and Mato Grosso do Sul. These occupations united workers and initiated the formation of the MST, culminating in the foundation of the movement with the realization of its first national meeting in January 1984. The MST was formed in interaction with other institutions, especially the Catholic Church, through the CPT. Learning from the history of peasant organization, the MST built its autonomy.
Through the occupation of land, the MST effectively territorialized itself across all of Brazil’s geographic regions, becoming a national movement in less than a decade. Territorialization is a process of multiplication of fractions of territory that occurs by the organization of groups of families that occupy and conquer land. Agrarian reform in Brazil has historically been realized by means of land occupations. In its almost 30 years of existence, the MST is the peasant movement that has realized the greatest number of land occupations, and, in the process, has transformed the action of occupation into one of the principal forms of re-peasantization in Brazil. The process of the MST’s formation is comprised of three distinct periods. The first encompasses the gestation and birth of the movement, from 1978 to 1985, during which the MST territorialized itself primarily in the regions of the south and southeast. During this period the movement defined its principles and form of organization, and adopted land occupations as the primary means by which to access land, thereby, defining its mode of re-peasantization.
The second period, between 1985 and 1990, marked the territorialization and consolidation of the MST in all regions of the country. The creation of an organizational structure, made up of committees of coordination and direction and a secretariat, were conceived on the basis of the practices of the historic peasant organizations and, principally, the lived experiences of families that organized committees and nuclei in the encampments and resettlement areas. Challenges faced, and practices tested, in the initial period of struggle became points of reference that outlined and guided the forms of organization and activities of the movement. In this way, landless peasants created their own body of representation, becoming a socio-territorial movement—in other words, a movement which has, as its primary objective, the acquisition of a fraction of territory.
The MSTs second National Congress, in 1990, marked the beginning of the third period of the movement’s formation, characterized by its institutionalization. At that time, the roots of its organizational structure had already been firmly established, including representative bodies and forms of organizing activities. In establishing, consolidating, and expanding its structure, the MST intensified the resistance of the landless peasantry. In the prior period of formation (1985–1990), the MST territorialized significantly; it grew from a movement organized in just five states to a more substantial movement of national character. Since 1990, there have not been any substantive changes in the MSTs organizational structure. In this period, the movement was confronted by numerous repressive state policies that created obstacles for land occupations and the development of the areas conquered. The massacres of Corumbiara in the state of Rondônia, on 9 August 1995 and Carajás on 17 April 1996 (see Figure 1), are but two examples of state repression and violence against the MST (Fernandes 2000). Since 1996, the movement has faced many other challenges related to the multidimensional nature of development, as well as challenges more specifically related to recent changes in the age-old agrarian question.
The central challenge of peasant movements is to guarantee the process of re-peasantization, that is, the reproduction of their members and territories. The reproduction of peasant territories is achieved through the implementation of pro-peasant policies in the areas of agricultural production, processing, marketing, education, health, housing, roads/transport, and technology. However, the dramatic changes occurring in the agrarian question over the last two decades have greatly affected peasant movements, and resulted in a significant reflux in the struggle for land and agrarian reform. This reflux has had much to do with the fact that the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, and Dilma Rousseff opted for a conservative agrarian reform, while investing significantly in the expansion of an agribusiness model that has ensured the perpetuation of land concentration and low incomes for peasant families (Fernandes 2013). Even though several progressive public policies were implemented, such as the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) and the Program of Education for Agrarian Reform Settlers (PRONERA), these have not been sufficient to change the agrarian situation so as to improve the lives of the majority of the peasant population.
Also, significant changes in the global energy matrix have led to the expansion of the areas used for the production of sugarcane and soybean (Fernandes, Welch and Gonçalves 2010) and intensified the process of land grabbing by foreign multinationals (Borras and Franco 2012; Clements and Fernandes 2013). This has, in turn, impacted peasant farming in Brazil, which has been relegated to the margins of public policies in the agro-energy sector and constantly threatened by the expansion of commodities. In addition to its own territories being threatened by agribusiness, the peasantry confronts agribusiness by occupying latifúndios. In the last 10 years, there has been an increase in the number of conflicts between peasant movements and agribusiness (DATALUTA 2013).
The majority of conflicts between the peasantry and agribusiness occur in regions where agribusiness is expanding on the lands of the latifúndios, principally for the production of sugarcane, orange, soybean and planted forest like eucalyptus. Over the past two decades, over one million families have engaged in land occupations; of these, 60 per cent have been organized by the MST. Between 1979 and 2013, over a million families have been settled through agrarian reform. This is indicative of a strong process of re-peasantization in Brazil (see Table 1). Nonetheless, it is important to note that only half of the families settled were the result of land expropriation, expressing a de facto process of re-peasantization. Although in the last decade the participation of the urban population in land occupations has increased, the number of land occupations has decreased. The government has instead prioritized the regularization of land titles for existing small farms, transforming them into peasant territories. Regularization of land titles accounts for the greatest part of the total area of land obtained by peasants through agrarian reform. Land can also be granted by the act of ‘recognition’, which is by states of the federation that adopt settlement projects. The purchase of land is a policy used, in some cases, to resolve conflicts, while donations of lands occur by means of institutions that support agrarian reform (see Table 1).
Geography of Rural Settlements: Policies for the Acquisition of Land, 1979–2013
Although peasant families have gained access to over 80 million hectares of land through occupations carried out by peasant movements, like the MST, this has not altered the fact that land concentration in Brazil remains among the highest in the world. Gaining access to land promotes re-peasantization, but the major challenge for peasants is to remain on the land.
Resistance and Subordination
Capitalized land rent is a social relation utilized by capital to appropriate the wealth produced by the peasantry. In this section, we analyze data from the 2006 Agricultural Census in order to elucidate the condition of subordination affecting the Brazilian peasantry, which endangers the process of re-peasantization. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Brazil possesses 8,514,876 sq. km of land. This is marked by extreme regional and territorial inequalities (IBGE 2009a, 2009b). These inequalities play a role in maintaining a highly concentrated land structure, as evidenced by a Gini index of 0.854. Most of Brazil’s lands are under the domain of large national and multinational corporations. These companies exert significant influence and effectively control agricultural development policies, by capturing the large majority of the resources destined for agricultural credit, monopolizing the markets on all scales, and directing the application of technology for increasing agricultural production. Primarily producing commodities, agribusiness in Brazil also constitutes a hegemonic power that determines the planning of agricultural production and subordinates peasants who are responsible for the majority of food production destined for the domestic market.
Brazil is one of the largest and most important agricultural producers in the world. In 1996–2006, of the total territory, 330 million hectares were used for agriculture and livestock production, according to the Agricultural Census. In 1975–1985, this agricultural area covered 375 million hectares, meaning that over the last 30 years, Brazil has used between 39 and 44 per cent of its territory for agricultural production, representing one of the greatest areas dedicated to agriculture in the world. The persistent inequality that marks the country’s rural territory becomes more evident when one compares data on peasant farming with that of agribusiness. The Census registered a total of 5,175,489 agricultural landholdings nationwide; of these, 84.4 per cent (4,367,902) were family units and 15.6 per cent (805,587) were capitalist holdings. The total area occupied by the family units was 80,250,453 hectares, while the area occupied by capitalist holdings was 249,690,940 hectares. Although agribusiness or capitalist agriculture used 76 per cent of the total agricultural area, gross annual production amounted only to 62 per cent of the total, or R$89 billion (US$45 billion). The gross annual production from peasant agriculture, on the other hand, was 38 per cent, or R$54 billion (US$28 billion), using just 24 per cent of the total area.
While using just under a quarter of all agricultural land, peasant farming accounts for 74 per cent of the total number of persons working in agriculture (12,322,225 people). In contrast, agribusiness employs about 4,245,319 people, or 26 per cent. This disparity is even more evident when considering that, in the territory pertaining to agribusiness, only two workers on average are employed per 100 hectares cultivated, while in territory pertaining to peasants the average ratio is 15 people per 100 hectares. This discrepancy is related to the fact that the majority of people who gain a livelihood from peasant agriculture live in the countryside, and the majority of those who are employed by agribusiness live in the city. In the same way, this difference reveals the distinct forms of use of rural territories. While for the peasantry, land is a place of production and housing, a place to call home, for agribusiness, land is merely a place of production. These distinctions are important characteristics for understanding the different models of territorial development promoted by the peasantry and agribusiness.
When we analyze data regarding the respective participation of peasant and capitalist landholdings in terms of the value of total agricultural production, the disparity between these two models is equally as pronounced. According to an analysis conducted by Alves and Paulo (2010), only 8.19 per cent of establishments (423,689 of 5,175,489), are responsible for generating 84.89 per cent of the total value of production. This means that 91.81 per cent, or 4,751,800 of the total number of establishments are responsible for just 15.11 per cent of the total production value. This data demonstrates the correlation between territorial concentration and the concentration of wealth. The situation is even worse when one considers that 11.3 million people living in 3,775,826 establishments receive a mere 4.03 per cent of the total wealth produced from agricultural production, and that the families of over 2,014,567 establishments have annual revenues equal to only half of the minimum wage, or less. The majority of the agricultural establishments receiving the lesser portion of the wealth generated corresponds to peasant agriculture.
Despite this obvious disparity, peasant agriculture is responsible for 70 per cent of beans, 87 per cent of cassava, 38 per cent of coffee, 46 per cent of corn, and 34 per cent of rice produced in Brazil. Moreover, peasant agriculture accounts for 59 per cent of pork, 46 per cent of chicken, 30 per cent of beef and 58 per cent of milk produced. The disparity between peasant and capitalist agriculture is also evident when analyzing the production of different food products. For example, 1.57 per cent of the establishments that produce corn account for 68.31 per cent of the total corn production, and 19.59 per cent of the establishments producing milk account for 73.3 per cent of total milk production. This concentration of production has produced differing attitudes toward the development of agriculture in Brazil. Some think-tanks defend that the farmers who produce less should be eliminated. Others defend the expansion of policies, such as agrarian reform and agricultural credit, which would increase the participation of these marginalized peasant farmers, thus promoting greater access to land and income generating opportunities.
The Brazilian agrarian paradox is stark: 74 per cent of producers receive only 15 per cent of agricultural credit and possess just 24 per cent of agricultural land, yet produce 38 per cent of total production value. On the other hand, agribusiness receives 85 per cent of all agricultural credit, controls 76 per cent of the agricultural area, produces 62 per cent of the total production value, and employs 26 per cent of the total number of people employed by agriculture. In the first example, on much less land, a greater number of people, who receive very little agricultural credit, divide a small share of the wealth produced, that is, the share that capital allows to stay in the hands of peasant farmers. In the second example, using vast extensions of land, fewer people receive a greater share of the resources used for agriculture and of the wealth produced. This same group also maintains a significant share of the wealth produced by the peasantry, through capitalized land rent, because agribusiness commercializes the majority of food products produced by peasants. The peasant class of over 2 million families, while contributing to 38 per cent of gross production, receives a monthly income of less than US$15 dollars and is forced to depend on government assistance to survive.
Inequality is often only exacerbated by government and private policies implemented through the development projects of national and transnational corporations. Other institutions, such as labour unions and peasant organizations, also participate in the process of territorial development, but on a smaller scale and with limited power. In most cases, these institutions do not initiate development projects, but rather submit themselves to the projects presented by the state and by capital. Subordinated workers and peasants confront an assailing capitalism that manifests itself through government policies in support of agribusiness, predominantly determining the logic of territorial planning and development. The confrontation which constantly occurs between these opposing postures generates permanent class conflicts which, when examined, allow a better understanding of the particularities of each of the respective development models. We can conceptualize these differences more clearly by analyzing various elements of the agrarian question. These elements will vary from country to country, as each possesses different variables that may be more or less predominant than others. In the case of Brazil, two of the principle problems which threaten the process of re-peasantization are the reflux of land occupations and the capitalization of peasant land rent.
Conclusion
The history of the formation of the Brazilian peasantry, and its geography, demonstrates that its existence is much more dependent on the actions of peasants organized in peasant movements than those of capital, which subordinates the peasantry and seeks to permanently maintain this state of subordination. Despite the gains, successes, and learning, however, Brazilian peasant movements have not yet been able to articulate the elaboration of a national project for peasant agriculture. They remain hostage to a model of agribusiness development promoted by governments of both the political Left and Right. The ideology created and promulgated by agribusiness has blinded even leftist intellectuals who have come to believe that the development of peasant agriculture cannot be thought of outside of the agribusiness model. Thus, the agribusiness model is viewed as a totality, and the peasantry as simply an attachment of the capitalist model.
It is this conception of agribusiness that led to the creation of a new concept which has attempted to replace the concept of peasantry. In the 1990s, in the context of neo-liberalism in Brazil, the concept of ‘family farmer’ or ‘family farming’ (agricultura familiar) emerged. With its emergence, the process of the destruction of the peasantry went from being a strictly physical process to an ideological process as well. The concept of family farming appeared as ‘modern’, in contrast to the concept of peasant, which seemed to connote ‘backwardness’, as has been analyzed in the works of Abramovay (1992) and Lamarche (1993, 1998). Family farming is one of the new expressions appropriated by agrarian capitalism in an attempt to mischaracterize the peasantry. The emergence of the concept impacted agrarian reality visibly, with the creation of public policies, such as the National Program for Strengthening Family Farming (PRONAF), and a national socio-territorial movement, the Federation of Family Farm Workers (FETRAF). The new concept sought to conceal the differences between non-capitalist family social relations and capitalist relations, masking the existence of the permanent conflicts.
The concept of family farming, now well established, has been incorporated by peasant movements, although without the modern/ backward dichotomy in which the term originated. In fact, every peasant is a family farmer and every family farmer is a peasant. The reaction of peasant movements to the concept, especially the MST, was positive, steering clear of the dichotomy that is frequently employed by government institutions. This is also a part of the process of re-peasantization: the response of the peasant movement was to recover the concept of peasant by associating it to the concept of family farmer. In fact, it is not through the use (or non-use) of such concepts that the peasantry is differentiated, but rather the condition of subordination of peasants to the model of capitalist development. The greatest challenge for peasant movements is to overcome this condition of subordination, of peasants seeing themselves as appendices of a capitalist model, and to construct an alternate model of development for peasant agriculture.
Only by overcoming this way of looking at agricultural development will the peasantry be truly emancipated. This is the paradigmatic debate that is being waged today by institutions, yet the predominance of the vision of agrarian capitalism has prevented changes in public policy. The reflux in the struggle for land and agrarian reform is one example of how the peasant movement has thus far failed to alter the correlation of forces and shift the dominant agricultural paradigm. This is the current reality of the agrarian question in Brazil.