Why agrarian reform is beneficial to society

To practice solidarity and get angry against any injustice, aggression and exploitation exerted against any person, community and nature, anywhere in the world. To fight and defend the equality between men and women and to fight against all kinds of racial and sexual discrimination. To create effective opportunities so nobody is discriminated and excluded due to gender and race.

To beautify our communities, taking care, planting trees, flowers, medicinal herbs and vegetables. Never sell conquered land. The land is a supreme good and has to warrant the survival of future generations.

To put a break the indiscriminate use of the land for other purposes such as houses for leisure, golf courts, etc. To reject the policy of importation as a substitute to the activity of production, and as an attempt against the food sovereignty of our peoples. From this perspective, it would become viable if it were inserted as a claim, a struggle platform for wide popular sectors in our countries. We, as peasants alone, will not conquer land reform and rural changes. We have to propose changes in agriculture, in the land ownership and in rural development processes, as part of a wide popular project for our peoples, where there would be a new economic, social and political order.

The concrete force of the farmers and the peoples in general, lays in its capacity to organise the biggest possible number of people, from the communities, mobilising it around a common strategic objective.

Therefore it is essential to engage the whole family, especially women and young members of the family, in this process of awareness and social mobilisation. It is necessary to generate willingness for a permanent struggle for our rights, be it through direct action or through large mass mobilisations. We have to create new forms of organisation, associations and co-operatives, of peasants and of people living in rural areas around the management of the economy, of production, of financial systems, and of rural development, in agreement with the cultural and organisational traditions of our peoples and based on the principals of mutual support and agricultural co-operation.

Agricultural co-operation in work and the social accumulation of capital is a natural process of the development of productive forces. But we have to adjust it and be creative on the different forms adjusting them, adequate to the reality of each region.

And put its benefits to serve the improvement of the living conditions of the workers in the rural areas. In this moment in the history of humanity, where international financial capital wideness its domination and exploitation by the means of an excluding globalisation, it is essential that the peoples of the 3rd World, the workers in general, and specially the peasants articulated in Via Campesina get organised and also developing ways of communication, exchange and international struggles to face the common enemy.

Based on this analysis we put following forward:. To preserve the existing forests and reforest the degraded areas. To fight for the immediate release of political prisoners that struggle for land To urge on a network of information and communication as a transcendental activity in the development and the strengthening of our struggles. Bangalore, India — October The study used an integrated neo-Marxist and Sustainable Rural Livelihoods SRLs theoretical approach supported by six years of fieldwork in three Brazilian states.

The study gathered a total of hours of taped interviews with academics, peasants, students, workers, government officials, church leaders, and co-op members. The study intentionally avoided collecting data through written questionnaires due to the high level of illiteracy among the landless peasants. The interviews were not highly structured because such a format is neither familiar nor comfortable for most Brazilian peasants.

Landless peasants have a strong oral tradition. The interviews had a looser, free-flowing format and sometimes lasted for several hours. This was particularly the case in group interviews. First, agrarian reform has had a limited impact on land inequality and rural poverty; second, concerted peasant mobilization is fundamental to overcoming landlessness; third, the nurturing of a culture of co-operation and the culture of solidarity are vital to making co-operatives viable; fourth, co-operative formation is inherently a political and conflictual process; fifth, interpersonal and group conflicts obstruct co-operative formation; sixth, the incorporation of principles of conflict management into co-operative formation is essential to overcoming internal conflicts; and seventh, the state has to play a major role in supporting agrarian reform by providing access to financial, educational, technological, and human resources.

This study has greatly contributed to the research literature on agrarian reform, peasant movements, and agricultural co-operatives in developed and developing countries.

It has also assisted local governments and peasant organizations in the formulation of policies and programs dealing with rural poverty in all its forms. He has a rich cross-cultural experience and a passion for teaching global social development issues with a focus on peasants and Indigenous peoples. These initiatives also helped farmers improved their ability to manage their enterprises.

The targeted provinces include:. For more information, please visit: www. You have clicked on a link to a page that is not part of the beta version of the new worldbank. Will you take two minutes to complete a brief survey that will help us to improve our website? Thank you for agreeing to provide feedback on the new version of worldbank.

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