Brazil: Energy sovereignty
vs. food sovereignty
In Brazil, production through agriculture
of a new energy model is present every day in the mass media and
increasingly the development of this field is gaining social endorsement
and economic justification. Rapidly, the use of land to
produce food is sharing its space with the fuel production. This
change in social perception is very evident in the repeated news
features showing farmers and landowners as the new “oil field”
owners.
Within the world panorama substituting
oil by a “renewable” energy, Brazil appears as a world leader
in agro-energy because of its tropical climate, its vast arable
lands, availability of water resources and regional facilities.
Furthermore, the advantageous position of Brazil in this world
leadership is further strengthened by the creation in 2005 of
a national agro-energy programme and an ambitious private investment
fund for the sector, planned and presided by the Minister of Agriculture
of President Lula’s first government, Roberto Rodrigues.
This fund will endeavour to attract some 200 million dollars within
the country, added to international investment (for example a
Dutch bank that appears to have the leadership in funds for this
type of project) aimed at shareholding in agro-business agro-energy
projects and also in purchasing land, private research funding,
project feasibility orientation and submission of proposals to
the government, thus acting as a lobby agent. These two
factors, a public programme and a private fund are concrete examples
of how the country is preparing for this great and historic opportunity
announcing the biofuel era.
Regarding the convictions of those guiding
the plans in this new era, Décio Gazzoni, an agronomy engineer
with over 30 years work as a researcher for EMBRAPA (the public
agriculture research and development company) and in charge of
the preparation of the national agro-energy programme, recently
declared that “we must be pragmatic and allow reforestation of
the Amazon with African palm trees” (“Dinheiro Rural”, year III,
no. 25, November 2006), which will enable production of biodiesel.
Because, according to him “if we do not find an economic option,
we will continue to log forests.” The only problem in this vision
would be the environmental groups and legislation, which only
permits reforestation to be done using native species.
This “pragmatism” in the new frontier
for the expansion of agro-business defended by the technician
who prepared the national agro-energy programme is the same as
that supported by various projects for the plantation of eucalyptus,
planned and financed in synergy with mining and steelworks for
the production of coal, particularly as the energy input for the
pig iron industry, one of the most important items on the Brazilian
export balance.
An example of the way the world views
Brazil as the great agro-energy frontier is the international
conference on bio-fuels to be held from 11 to 13 December in the
city of Londrina, Parana State, where specialists from various
countries will get to know and discuss the advantages of bio-diesel,
ethanol and thus be able to better assess which alternative is
more profitable.
In the case of Brazil, the amount of
public and private investment and the contracts involved in the
construction of bio-fuel processing and refining plants is being
consolidated on a medium and long term basis. In addition to the
productive facilities, an important energy geo-policy and appropriation
of natural resources exists leading to greater pressure on the
agricultural frontier areas, increasing the value of land and
thus having a direct impact on the agrarian reform. The
promotion of biofuels is strengthening land occupation with the
expansion of monoculture sugar cane plantations for the production
of alcohol, in addition to economically diversifying soybean use
which, in relation to other oilseeds used in making biodiesel,
is the most advantageous because it already has consolidated productive
chains (credits, inputs, warehouses, transportation, etc.) and
because its by-product oilcake, is used for as food for livestock
breeding.
The devastating effects of soybean cultivation
in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay are well known, in addition
to the chain of violation of human rights, deforestation and environmental
destruction arising from soybean cultivation. For its part, since
it was started during the first Colonial economic cycle, monoculture
sugar cane plantation unequivocally repeats a model exploiting
nature and labour.
Bearing this in mind, it is important
to make a critical assessment of the endorsement of agro-energy
as the new ‘renewable’ source of energy also serving to ‘renew’
the ideological rhetoric of agro-business and its land occupation
strategies and to strengthen the rural development model based
on industrial monoculture agro-exports, controlled by major capital
holders and trans-national companies, whose ecological and social
impacts are presently the hub of environmental struggles and peasant
movements in Latin America.
It is important to remember that land
concentration in Brazil is still one of the greatest in the world,
that “hunger” is essentially a political question and that the
implementation of a comprehensive agrarian reform is still a structural
challenge to democracy in the country. But most important, the
story of the struggle for land in Brazil generated a peasant movement
acknowledged all over the world, the MST (“Movimento dos sem terra”
– the Movement of the Landless), which in turn is part of the
Via Campesina, the international peasant coordination. Via Campesina
and the MST in Brazil and other rural movements in various other
countries are all linked by their common defence of food sovereignty:
“Food sovereignty is the right
of all peoples to define their own agricultural policies and regarding
food, to protect and regulate national agricultural production
and the domestic market in order to attain sustainable development
goals, to decide how far they want to be self-sufficient, to prevent
their markets from being flooded with surplus products from other
countries that dump them on the international market, and to give
preference to local fisherfolk regarding control of the use of
and rights over aquatic resources. Food sovereignty does not reject
international trade but rather defends the option of formulating
those trade policies and practices that best serve the right of
the population to avail itself of safe, nutritious and ecologically
sustainable methods and foodstuffs. Food sovereignty is the right
of all peoples, their nations or unions of States to define their
agricultural and food policies, without dumping involving third-party
countries.” (VIA CAMPESINA, introduction to the DECLARATION ON
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY, 1996).
The defence of food sovereignty as a
political policy would therefore be the peoples’ right to produce
their own foodstuffs in accordance with the conditions of their
territories and their food culture. In the twenty-first century,
questions such as agrarian reform and peasants’ rights continue
to be central in responding to serious environmental and social
issues (such as rural exodus and migrations) arising from the
expansion of urban and industrial society affecting humanity as
a whole and not only the rural population.
Before hastily taking up the task of
producing the fuel that the world needs, at a pace imposed on
by this model of industrial production and consumption and capital
accumulation, it is crucial we think of what we want and what
we are planting for the future. Are we in fact breaking away from
our Colonial mould of dependency or are we merely updating the
terms of exploitation and repeating ancient equations of submission?
How far are the biofuel production plans going to serve the needs
of the Brazilian people? Or what will be produced to subsidize
with energy the rationale of the export monoculture? In this framework
and before it is too late, a critical examination should be made
of the discourse promoting energy sovereignty to find out how
far this sovereignty will be achieved at the expense of mortgaging
the premise of food sovereignty.
By
Camila Moreno, research worker CPDA (postgraduate in Development,
Agriculture and Society) / Rural Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro, member of Terra de Direitos, Brazil.
