Subject: [permaculture] 'celebrating' Grameen, Nobel, and
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:42:06 +0000
I think a major problem in latin american countries is land tenure and
availability of land. Many "farmers" are really just agricultural workers,
forming a proletariat. They may have little or no land of their own and
have to work for others at minimum or sub-minimum wages. I've heard that
Mexico has one of the better land distribution systems in latin america, and
in other countries land distribution is more skewed towards larger ranches,
estates, plantations etc.
Here in Trinidad, despite the downsizing of the sugar industry, the
government keeps delaying the distribution of idle lands to former sugar
workers as it promised. The government also seems to be going ahead with
aluminium smelters which will cause health problems from pollution and also
require hundreds of acres of secondary forest to be cleared. This is done
in the name of economic "development", but I think in the long run it will
mean more dependency on a few jobs provided by multinational companies who
will make billions in profits.