22 June 2009 | Interviews | Food Sovereignty
Fighting Monoculture
Brazil: Environmentalists Raise Awareness about the impact of monoculture plantations
lenth: 01:28 minutes
Download: MP3 (962.3 kb)
A network of environmental organizations and trade unions of Rio Grande do Sul state, in Brazil, is raising awareness among the residents of the big-city dwellers about the impacts of monoculture plantations on the rural communities. They believe that the passive attitude of the city movements ends up facilitating the repression of peasant organizations.
A few kilometers from the big cities like Porto Alegre, there is a dramatic situation suffered by the family farmers, forced to leave their lands to benefit three big corporations - Votorantim, Aracruz and Stora Enso – which have taken over a big part of the Southern state.
This new reality has mainly displaced the rice and cattle farming and it has damaged family farming for good.
Since the right-wing Social Democratic Party of Brazil came to power, the relation between big corporations and the authorities has become a vicious circle, where corruption is a common practice.
Everything is understood if the dark interests behind the campaigns to fund political parties are taken into account.
The environmentalists claim that these campaigns are designed by advertising agencies that develop business plans based on the financial contributions of corporations.
