Rural problems

I am learning that some problems are globalized. I spent last week in Monte Santo, visiting sixteen different farms that are members of the cooperative I am working with, and I heard the same story over and over again: people are leaving the countryside and going to the city to find work. Large companies are gobbling up the land and converting whole communities into labor pools, instead of communities of farmers. It is the same story I heard over and over again in Lawrence, Kansas before I came to Brazil.

Brazilians know about U.S. agricultural subsidies and talk about them as an idea that the Brazilian government should adopt. I am quick to point out the current shortcomings of our subsidies: they go primarily to those that do not need them--large-scale farmers, and they also only go to production of basic grains with low prices, such as corn, soy, sorghum, wheat, and some cotton. Some say that it is this focus on low-price grains that is forcing small-scale farmers off their land and leading to the further consolidation of land in the Midwest in the hands of the big guys, who can produce at such a large scale that they make money off quantity, not quality, and low prices don´t make or break them, as they do a small farmer.

For those of you who don´t know, our legislators missed a big chance recently to reform the Farm Bill (the piece of legislation that governs ag subsidies, school lunch programs, and more) in its renewal year this year, and instead of changing it to apply to diversified ag industries and nontraditional crops that fetch higher prices, they pretty much kept it the way it was. They basically rejected the only hope that small-scale farmers in the Midwest have of staying on their land, and continuing and enriching a rural culture that is very quickly dying.

Southern Brazil does not have a counter-movement against this shift, as the American Midwest does. Around Lawrence, for example, there are lots of young people who have bought or rented farms individually or collectively, and are producing, making a living, and enjoying it, taking pride in it. It is ironic, actually, because the children of the traditional farmers themselves are moving off the land, into the big cities where things are happening and there are actually opportunities; driving through a rural small town in the Midwest is like driving through a ghost town more often than not. But there are these young urbanites moving out into the country, going back to the land. I wish more young people would do it, actually. I want to do it. I think this retaking of rural places will be key to saving ourselves from always eating the same packaged food, that always tastes the same, and comes from noplace, produced by no one, because the industrial farm and the processing plant could be anywhere.

In Brazil there is some hope in a small movement to start a national Fairtrade initiative, a national certification. Heading up this movement is Lula´s government and a coalition of Brazilian NGOs. Hopefully they will be able to create an internal market for fairtrade products in Brazil, where the average middle-class consumer does not really know what fairtrade is. It is exciting to think about the prospects: Brazilians buying fairtrade cachaça (cane liquor) made artesanally by a family, coffee from small farmers, farm-made cheese, and traditional sweets, all for a fair price that actually provides a livelihood for families and helps keep them on their land in the places they love. While that proposal is in the works, coffee cooperatives are seeking fairtrade certification to sell their coffee at a fairer price to Europe and the United States. Of course, that also has its own problems, but it is a step in the right direction.