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RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) — Rural landless workers in Brazil stepped up their campaign for agricultural reform Thursday by holding several demonstrations and occupying a hydroelectric plant and freeway toll stations, their organization said. The protests were part of the Landless Farmworkers Movement's "Red April" operation to force the government...
Dear Friends of the MST,
Agrarian Reform is blocked in our country. The concentration of land is growing, the settlements are not receiving effective support, violence against the landless is on the rise and the estate owners and agribusinesses are operating with impunity. The massacre of Eldorado dos Carajas is the main symbol of the...
Dear friend of the MST,
Forty-eight year old Almerinda Marques says that he has begun to understand the world. Vilma Pereira da Silva, 50 years old, says that she now has the opportunity to do what she couldn’t do before: study. Both are landless workers. Both live in encampments, one in Minas Gerais and the other in Paraná. Both...
By Mario Osava RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 24 (IPS) - It is a question of "national sovereignty, not xenophobia," said the president of Brazil’s land reform agency, INCRA, explaining the need to regulate foreign land ownership in Brazil. The biofuel frenzy has driven growing purchases of land in Brazil in the last few years, by local and foreign...
by Isabella Kenfield Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) On March 7th—International Women's Day—dozens of Brazilian women occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, destroying the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-modified (GM) corn...
Stora Enso's Brazilian Imbroglio by Maurna Desmond, Forbes.com Paper maker Stora Enso is catching heat from activists in Brazil who recently invaded its factory and blocked major roads. The Finnish-Swedish company wants to plant roots in South America, but the locals haven't been very welcoming. On Wednesday, Brazilian land rights group...
A New Report From the Oakland Institute & Terra de Direitos by Camila Moreno with Anuradha Mittal
Oakland, CA February 2008: Later this year, the Bush administration is set to have discussions with lawmakers on whether the US import tariff (US $0.54 per gallon) on ethanol should be allowed to expire or not. Designed to protect US...
By Stephen Leahy U.S. biofuels production is driving up food prices around the world, giving billions of poor people a very good reason to hate U.S. policy, say environmentalists. "The U.S. has led the fight to stem global hunger, now we are creating hunger," said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental think...
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 24 (IPS) - Joao Pedro Stédile thinks that the World Social Forum (WSF) should remain a debating arena for civil society, because with all its breadth and variety, to attempt to agree on resolutions is "an illusion." The Brazilian landless movement activist is also in favour of holding the WSF every three years, instead of...
We begin this year by taking on an important battle for the development of our country around Tax Reform and reform of the current economic policy. The role of taxation is not just apportioning the tax burden among the various sectors of society but is also a basic tool for income distribution and helps to shape the project for the country that...