The Paraguayan peasants, a country with one of the continent’s highest levels of land concentration, are waiting for policies of distribution of these lands known as “unduly acquired”. If the government failed to act, they would be willing to occupy the unproductive lands, Lidia Ruiz, of the Organization de Lucha por la Tierra (OLT)-Via Campesina, told Real World Radio.

“Some of these lands have been given to friends of the dictator and others were directly taken from people who benefited from the agrarian reform, increasing the existent inequality”, said the peasant leader.

In the west of the country, these lands are used to plan genetically modified soy, while in Chaco they are used for cattle growing.

“We demand the intervention of the Judiciary, of the Legislative and Executive branches to recover these lands. What we have achieved through a demonstration of 12,000 people in October is to have a Commission for the Recovery of Land”, she added.

85% of the productive lands are owned by only 2% of the population; there are 3 million hectares of land planted with soy, mostly managed by Brazilian or Argentinean agribusiness companies.

Lidia points out that they aim to distribute this large surface of land they demand to recover among over 500,000 landless peasants “in order to achieve national productive and economic development”, which would have a great impact on Paraguayan food production.

“We don’t eat soy and the cattle that occupies 90% the country’s land are destined to export and only few people can acquire the remaining ten per cent destined for internal consumption”.

Lidia participated in a regional working group on strategies to follow by social movements on land grabbing in the Mercosur countries: Uruguay, Argentina , Brasil and Paraguay held in Montevideo on December 19 and 20 and organized by REDES – Friends of the Earth Uruguay.