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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Access to Land Essential to Eradicating Poverty, Experts Say
  • Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 22:46:31 -0600



Access to Land Essential to Eradicating Poverty, Experts Say
Humberto Márquez Inter Press Service News Agency
http://ipsnews.net


SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Mar 23 (IPS) - Family farming can be a more efficient
means of producing food and promoting development than large-scale
agricultural operations, Brazilian expert Edson Teófilo told participants
at the International Land Coalition Global Assembly currently underway in
this eastern Bolivian city.

New schools of economic thought maintain that units of agricultural
production that can be worked by a single family can be successful and lead
to the sustainable generation of income, as long as certain conditions are
in place, such as access to markets, credits, education and technology,
said Teófilo, an advisor to the Brazilian Ministry of Agrarian
Development.

Brazil, where 16 million hectares of land have been distributed to half a
million families in the last decade through agrarian reform, is a prime
example, he noted.

"In 2003, the contribution made by family farming to the country's gross
domestic (GDP) grew by 9.4 percent, while the intensive agribusiness share
rose by only 5.1 percent," Teófilo explained later in an interview with
IPS.

Since the Millennium Summit in 2000, the world's leaders have recognised
that poverty is the greatest challenge facing humanity, and the key to
reducing it is ensuring progress in rural areas, said Bruce Moore, the
coordinator of the International Land Coalition (ILC).

Of the 1.1 billion people in the world living in extreme poverty,
three-quarters of them, or around 800 million, live in rural areas, trying
to survive on less than a dollar a day, he noted.

They include small farmers, fishers, animal herders, forest dwellers and
landless peasants. Large numbers of them are indigenous people, and in
every grouping, the majority are women, Moore told the representatives of
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from over 20 countries attending the
ILC meet, which ends Thursday.

In September 2000, the U.N. General Assembly adopted eight Millennium Goals
(MDGs), aimed at eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, improving infant
and maternal health, providing greater access to education, ending gender
discrimination and curbing pollution, among other objectives.

The number one goal established at the U.N. Millennium Summit is to halve
the proportion of the world's population living on less that one dollar a
day by the year 2015.

This the first time that the ILC assembly is being held outside Rome, where
the organisation is based. There is plenty of material for the discussion
of access to land in this eastern Bolivian city, capital of a region
characterised by extensive tracts of land used for cattle farming and
forestry and a million hectares of soy grown on large plantations.

Large numbers of campesinos (peasant farmers) have emigrated here from the
highlands of western Bolivia, no longer able to make a living on small
parcels of land with deteriorated soil.

In the eastern lowlands, alongside these newly arrived small tenant farmers
and landless campesinos, indigenous communities are fighting for their
rights to land that they consider their ancestral territory.

Jorge Prestel, president of the Cattle Farmers Federation of Santa Cruz,
told IPS that "the crux of the problem does not lie in access to land or
the conditions needed for production, but rather in the terms of trade. If
we are the ones who produce, but it is the First World that determines the
rules of the game, then we will not be able to produce wealth."

But Teófilo refuted this theory, saying "it focuses on the conservative
modernisation of the countryside, but as has been demonstrated in Brazil --
where a combative movement of landless rural workers emerged last decade --
economic growth alone merely exacerbates social inequalities and transforms
rural poverty into urban destitution."

Moore noted that in many countries, the issue of improving secure access to
land for the poorest sectors is linked to the fundamental inequalities in
rural communities or in the country at large.

He referred to studies from the World Bank and the European Union which
conclude that democracy is achieved much later in countries dominated by
large landowners than in those that depend on the production of small
farmers, and that the concentration of land ownership in the hands of a few
reduces incentives for providing public services.

Moore also defended the right of women to control assets in rural
communities, given the positive impact this has on expenditures on
education and other social needs.

Rita Lakor from the non-governmental group Uganda Land Alliance said that
in east Africa, women's participation in the agricultural workforce can be
extremely high, reaching up to 80 percent in some communities, yet studies
reveal that barely 13 percent of women farmers in Uganda own their own
land.

The outlook has become even more bleak as a result of the high incidence of
HIV/AIDS in countries like Uganda, because when men become sick, they begin
to sell off their lands, which are therefore not left to the women.

Lakor added that her organisation and others are pushing for changes in the
country's agrarian legislation, so that at least one-third of landowners
are women.

Throughout the world, Moore noted, disadvantaged women and men, like the
rural poor, are demanding more. Unleashing the potential of the poorest
sectors to make them better producers and consumers, through access to
land, capacity building and public investment, will contribute to economic
prosperity in general, he concluded. (END/2005)





  • [Livingontheland] Access to Land Essential to Eradicating Poverty, Experts Say, Tradingpost, 04/12/2005

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