Government to launch land reform program this month, says minister

The federal government will announce, later this month, the resumption of a series of actions with a view to promoting the redistribution of unproductive lands. The announcement was made this Saturday (13), by the Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture, Paulo Teixeira, at a fair held by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in São Paulo.

“Now in May, President Lula will announce the agrarian reform program. Land reform will return to Brazil. (We are going to) distribute land and recover land that is unproductive, allocating it to agrarian reform”, said Teixeira, adding that, in addition to distributing land, the government will provide credit and technical assistance to settlers, stimulating the formation of cooperatives and agro-industries.

Accompanied by representatives of various federal agencies and leaders of social movements, Teixeira praised the work of the MST, stating that the movement “produces healthy food and social equality” in a country that, according to him, stopped harvesting food for the population in order to to produce commodities agricultural products sold to other countries.

“The production of rice, beans, cassava, vegetables, legumes and fruits has decreased”, assured Teixeira when attributing to the landless movement the expertise (competence) in producing food without the use of pesticides that can contribute to national food security.

Inequality

“The MST will be very important to reduce social inequality in the country and to include the people in the land, producing food in a country that lost land for food production (in a context in which) it expanded the production of soy and corn” , he said, adding that while the federal government plans to encourage small agricultural producers, it will not interfere with agribusiness. “That’s fine and we’re not going to mess with that.”

the minister too mocked the creation, by the Chamber of Deputies, of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) to investigate the MST and land invasions in the country.

“Do you want to investigate the MST? Do you want to create a CPI for this? I think you’ll find things interesting. You will see that there (in the movement’s camps and settlements) there is grape juice that does not involve slave labor. You will find products that do not have pesticides. They will find non-transgenic soy”, he said, referring to some of the products produced by the MST, the largest producer of organic rice in Latin America, according to the Instituto Riograndense de Arroz (Irga), an autarchy subordinate to the state secretary of Agriculture, Livestock and Development Rural area of ​​Rio Grande do Sul.

high interest

In defense of the MST, Teixeira added a criticism of the president of the central bank, Roberto Campos Neto – to whom members of the government, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, attribute responsibility for maintaining the interest rate. Currently, the economy’s basic interest rate, the Selic, is at 13.75%.

“If (those who want to investigate the MST) want to discover a man who is creating a shambles, a mess in this country, they will find Roberto Campos Neto, who is making the highest interest on the face of the earth and leading many Brazilians to extreme poverty and to misery”, he opined.

The main target of criticism of maintaining high interest rates – made not only by members of the federal government, but also by many economists and entities such as the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) – Campos Neto has justified the interest rate policy implemented by the Central Bank claiming that the definition of the rate is not limited to inflation, including elements that, in his assessment, still require caution, such as the government’s gross debt.

“It is high debt that makes interest rates high”said the BC president on the 25th, when participating in a public hearing at the Senate Economic Affairs Committee, where he guaranteed that the technical criteria prevail over politicians in BC decisions.