Brazil Farm Workers Invade Plantations

Farm occupations are common in Brazil, where the MST has opposed land concentration and foreign investment for many years. Recently, groups like Via Campesina (and particularly women within those groups) have combined calls for social justice with a clear environmental message – stop planting green deserts full of useless crops, or using Brazilian land as a GMO laboratory – and give the land to the people.

More info: Planting Sugarcane and Reaping Poverty and Eco-Degradation in Brazil

SAO PAULO, Brazil — About 500 farm workers protesting alleged environmental damage by Brazilian and Finnish paper companies invaded plantations they said were creating a “green desert” in southern Brazil by blanketing the landscape with eucalyptus trees, police said.

The protesters, mostly women from the Brazilian branch of the Via Campesina farm workers rights group, on Tuesday occupied two plantations owned by Finland’s Stora Enso Oyj and another owned by Brazil’s Votorantim Celulose e Papel SA, said Rio Grande do Sul state police Col. Paulo Roberto Mendes.

Another plantation owned by an independent producer who is negotiating a partnership with Aracruz Celulose SA also was invaded in the pre-dawn raids Tuesday in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southern most state.

Via Campesina said in a statement that some 1,300 women participated in Tuesday’s invasions, aimed at denouncing the social and environmental impact of the growing “green desert” created by the paper companies in Latin America’s largest country. Via Campesina also wanted to promote agrarian reform.

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

RELATED ITEMS

• Campesinos raid GMO lab and farm in Aracruz, Brazil
  Posted by Szamko on Friday, March 10th 2006
• Threat of GE Trees and Growing Reliance on Tree Plantations Jeopardize Endangered Forests Worldwide
  Posted by meme_mutation on Monday, October 9th 2006
• Pulp Factions
  Posted by anthony on Wednesday, January 18th 2006