Agrarian Reform & Land Distribution in Brazil Essay

Agrarian Reform & Land Distribution in Brazil - Essay Example (CNN, 2007) This pitiful state in the agrarian sector in Brazil is responsible for the small peasant with big-sized family ending up with no land for tilling. This pathetic land holding pattern in Brazil has led to widespread resentment among the peasant class. This resentment has even taken the form of violence across the nation as the demand for land for mere survival has intensified. The distribution of land in Brazil is indeed uneven. Thorough decades, till date the agricultural development in Brazil is very much biased towards the big agricultural estate. This has benefited only a tiny section of the oligarchy that is associated with commercial and trade capital investment while leaving majority of the population out of its ambit. In the past two and a half decade, more than 30 million workers related to farming, including men and women, had to leave their land and a further 4.8 million peasant families can dream of holding own land. One of the most appalling results of this gross injustice is starvation—nearly 31.5 million people are being tormented from food shortage in Brazil, of which 50% live in the countryside. (FIAN International Secretariat, May 2000). Agricultural modernization process initiated in the country has only aggravated the situation—inequality in the distribution of land has widened which resulted into more exploitation of the agricultural laborers. In fact, majority of the agricultural laborers are denied their basic rights. The situation is so serious that in some areas of the country, slavery is an accepted practice. Along with this, the female workers are subjected to huge discrimination—they work twice as long as their male equal, and are paid less than the males. The modern agricultural system in Brazil is based on the intensive exploitation of scarce land and natural resources, along with the use of heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The