“The government is doing nothing about agrarian reform. It’s a disgrace.”

By Tatiana Merlino
From O Joio e o Trigo

Fourteen months into President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s third term, the government “owes a debt” to agrarian reform, says economist João Pedro Stedile, leader and founder of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), in an interview with Joio.

It’s a disgrace. We’ve been at it for a year and a half and we’ve made no progress. Expropriation has not advanced. Credit for the settlers hasn’t advanced, nor has the Pronera [National Program for Education in Agrarian Reform],” he criticizes, during a conversation on a cold afternoon in São Paulo, at the movement’s National Secretariat.

Supporters of Lula, the MST worked hard to get him elected in 2022. Stedile reinforces the need to continue defending the president against “his enemies,” which, according to him, are the multinationals, financial capital, the “predatory” latifundia, and part of agribusiness.

And we want to defend him against his enemies. Now, the government as a whole is falling short of our expectations, of the working class in general.”

In the interview, Stedile says that the main achievement of the MST, which celebrated its 40^th anniversary in January this year, is to give dignity to the landless. He explains the change in the movement’s program, which was born defending a “classic agrarian reform ,” and today defends a “’popular’ agrarian reform,” and what he believes are the three models of agriculture that exist in the country today: “one for the workers and two for capital.”

The economist also says that the issue between family farming and agribusiness is not an incompatibility in terms of size and properties, but rather the incompatibility in the models of farming.

Unfortunately, because of the nature of Lula’s current government, of the class composition in government, there is no awareness of these differences, interests, and contradictions. I’ve had enough of hearing ministers say that there is no incompatibility between family farming and agribusiness. Agribusiness using pesticides is incompatible with the ten-hectare neighbor who doesn’t, because it will contaminate, it will kill biodiversity,” he explains.

Check out the full interview:

Can you take stock of the MST’s 40 years and its main achievements: beyond the numbers of settled families, cooperatives, agri-industries, could you talk about the symbolic, ideological, and educational achievements?

It’s very difficult to take stock. I wouldn’t dare give that headline. I think the main thing is that we managed to build a popular movement of very poor peasants, who, through their struggle, have won their dignity. The landless, once they join the MST, start walking with their heads held high. And walk. The landless worker, the landless salaried worker, the landless sharecropper is a servant. They are always subjugated, not only by the exploitation of their work, but also by social relations. 

So the MST, I think, has recovered a very large portion of the Brazilian rural population who, in general, have always been excluded, who are heirs to 400 years of slavery and are heirs to a peasantry that didn’t get land. So, if I were to sum it up in a single word, I would say that the MST, in these 40 years, has restored the dignity of these people.

The second aspect—which we also value highly—is that the movement has always worked on social relations and the family. We are not a movement of adult men. We are everyone’s movement. Since the beginning of the MST, women, the elderly, children, and young people have participated. So the ways in which we operate have involved the whole family in some activity. This is very important because it changes social relations within the family. And we also incorporated into our modus operandi the appreciation of cultural aspects and of food and music which, in general, due to the urban hegemony of television, were always relegated. For those who live in the rural areas, then, it was like a resurgence, a revaluation of what rural culture is, from food, music, knowledge, and religiosity itself. And I say this as self-criticism: the left has never given much thought to religiosity. As we are a peasant movement, which from the outset had a lot of influence from Liberation Theology, this allowed us to incorporate respect for people’s faith, for their religious practices.

We also made a lot of progress in the economy. We realized that it wasn’t enough to conquer land to get out of poverty. From the beginning, we encouraged the organization of cooperatives, the organization of agro-industries and, over our 40 years, we have also evolved towards a broader vision of the social function of agriculture. In the current elaboration, we consider it fundamental to produce healthy food. That is the function of agriculture. It therefore goes beyond my interests, those of my family, my community or my settlement. My mission in the world is to produce food for others. And healthy food that preserves people’s health. And so we have always been against the use of pesticides. More recently, we have also incorporated the view that it is important to defend nature, because human beings are part of that nature. Their health, their lives, their relationships depend on this interaction with nature, especially in rural areas. At first, nature itself helped make us aware of climate change, of the tragedies that have been happening as contradictions, of the very aggressions that capital inflicts on the environment. 

Of course, over those 40 years, we’ve also made many mistakes and had many difficulties organizing. [Mistakes] that are always highlighted by our enemies, by the large landowners, by the right-wing, who only criticize the MST. But we don’t worry about criticism. When it comes from allies, we try to understand, and when it comes from enemies, they reassure us that we’re on the right path. Because we have antagonistic interests between the bourgeoisie, the latifundia, and the workers. 

Considering that Brazil has missed opportunities to carry out agrarian reform and that the situation has been so adverse for the issue in recent years, to what do you attribute the fact that the MST continues to be a relevant movement? 

It is true that there has never been any agrarian reform in Brazil. And that the many agrarian reform projects or programs that have been presented have not been viable or have even been defeated. One of the reasons is because the agrarian reform program cannot be separated from a country-wide project. It has to be part of the general changes in society. That’s why, in my opinion, the historical time we came closest to implementing agrarian reform was in ’62 or ’64, when society, in the crisis of industrial capitalism, began to debate a country-wide project, a project for Brazil. And the way to debate this project for Brazil was in those basic reform proposals, which encompassed the entire socio-economic life of the Brazilian people. And among them was agrarian reform, which was not just a political or propaganda slogan. At that time, we were graced by the wisdom of Celso Furtado, who elaborated an agrarian reform project that was historic—and still is today, in my view. It was the most radical in terms of the changes proposed. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t made possible by this business-military alliance that the US had planned for Brazil. And the reforms weren’t made possible, not even the agrarian reform. And we had 20 years of military dictatorship that turned the Brazilian economy back into a mere colony or an economy dependent on foreign capital, but above all on the interests of the United States. Well, even in 2002, when we won elections with Lula or the left, our victory was much more a reaction of the population to the problems that neoliberalism had caused, of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso and [Fernando] Collor governments, than a country-wide project. The country-wide project we had, which included agrarian reform, was in ’89. Then there was that famous popular-democratic program that Lula defended in the campaign. It included agrarian reform. And it came from a process of mass mobilization, but we were defeated by the international situation. Defeated by the strength that the bourgeoisie still had in the media and by the economic power of the bourgeoisie. 

So, when we won the election in 2002, it was under different circumstances, there was no country-wide project and there was no revival of the mass movement, so Lula dedicated himself to resolving conflicts instead of advancing agrarian reform. Since he didn’t have a country-wide program or an agrarian reform project, he only made progress in response to popular pressure, occupations, and marches. And now, despite these defeats as a country-wide project, with the agrarian reform project, which is the essence of your question, why do we resist? It’s because the cause is just. And because there is a real socio-economic need. There are still millions of workers who live in the rural areas or work in agriculture for the latifundia, for agribusiness, and having autonomy over the land is still the solution. 

In conceptual terms, with the change in the scenario in the rural areas of Brazil, you have changed your program. For the MST, what is classic, Mexican-inspired agrarian reform and what is ‘popular’ agrarian reform, which you now defend?

In people’s common sense, or even in Brazilian academic circles that have never dedicated themselves to studying agrarian reform, it is a generic term that applies to everything. However, in the recent history of humanity, since this expression began to be used, there have been many types of agrarian reform, depending on the class struggle and the history of each country. During the pandemic, I ended up dedicating myself to a project that had been on my mind for years, stimulated by organic intellectual friends from peasant movements all over the world. I organized the collection “Historical Experiences of Agrarian Reform in the World,” which systematizes the various types of agrarian reform. 

Here in Brazil, the most precise theoretical elaboration was that of Celso Furtado, which was still a classic agrarian reform proposal. It proposed democratizing land ownership, eliminating latifundia, transforming peasants into producers of goods for the domestic market and, at the same time, consumers of industrial goods so that they could improve their lives, while buying industrial goods: washing machines, televisions, motorcycles, cars, etc. So, the conception of classical agrarian reform is a developmentalist agrarian reform combined with the development of capitalist productive forces. However, for it to be politically viable—since it is a state action—it depends on an alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie and the peasantry. There has never been such an alliance here in Brazil. It’s not that the peasantry doesn’t want it. It’s just that the Brazilian industrial bourgeoisie didn’t want it, because it has always been subordinate to foreign capital. It has never thought of the nation as a development project, the Brazilian bourgeoisie has never been nationalist. 

We’ve never had a national bourgeoisie?

We never had a national bourgeoisie, even though it was Brazilian. Florestan Fernandes helped us understand this. And so we lacked the strength of a nationalist bourgeoisie to implement agrarian reform. But when we were born as the MST, with the re-democratization of the country, our programme was classic agrarian reform, with the idea of ‘let’s confront the latifundia and let’s develop the productive forces in the interior, increase production, buy tractors, develop.’ With that, our people would get out of poverty. 

Over the years, we realized that this wasn’t enough. So, that ideology that marked the peasantry throughout Latin America—and, as you said, it originated from the influence of Emiliano Zapata, when he conceptualized the Mexican agrarian reform proposal, which didn’t even have the name of agrarian reform, they called it Plan de Ayala—was land for those who work it. So it was very much a peasant vision. It wasn’t even classical agrarian reform yet. When the MST was born, it was a mixture of the Mexican vision, but we realized that it was neither economically nor politically viable in Brazil. So much so that it didn’t become a reality, despite the crisis of the 1960s. We matured, debated and, based on praxis, on the real contradictions we were experiencing, based on the study of historical experiences, we arrived at this new formulation of a popular agrarian reform. 

It began to gestate in the movement around 2010, and from there the still embryonic formulation of the 2014 MST Congress is already moving in the direction of a popular agrarian reform. And the essence of popular agrarian reform is that it no longer places the work of the peasant at the center, but the production of food for society as a whole. It puts respect for nature at the center, the development of agro-industries, but in a cooperative way. And of course, for it to be realized universally in Brazil, it would have to combine a popular government and a strong peasant movement—and these conditions have not yet been met. So that’s why, despite being a theoretical formulation, since 2014 the objective conditions have not yet been realized. Because a popular agrarian reform depends on this combination. 

Instead of the industrial bourgeoisie, it is now a popular government that is interested in solving the problem of hunger, poverty, and inequality that exists in society, in Brazil, anywhere. And, at the same time, it’s not just the government’s doing, but it needs very strong peasant movements—not just the MST, but other sectors of the peasantry. And that’s where it differs from the classic one, because the popular agrarian reform is not just a peasant reform, it’s not just to solve the problem of the poverty of the landless. It’s an agrarian reform that thinks about society, that thinks about the nation, and that’s why it has to be concerned with solving the problems of all the people—that’s why it’s popular. 

You say there are three models of agriculture. What you call unproductive predatory latifundia, agribusiness, and family farming. I’d like to understand who you consider to be the enemy. Because earlier we only talked about unproductive latifundia, but agribusiness can be highly productive…

That’s true. Even on the left or in peasant movements, historically only the large estate and the latifundia appeared as, let’s say, a “ghost” class, as ideological. However, the reality of Brazil has evolved and we now have three models operating in agriculture: two for capital and one for the workers. Naming these models is still a political exercise. Brazilian academia has never looked into this. So, in a militant way, we are adopting these names. Firstly, there is a way of exploiting Brazilian agriculture, which is the so-called predatory latifundia, which are the large estates of the latifundia, but which are only dedicated to accumulating capital, privately appropriating the goods of nature. It doesn’t care about the capitalist development of the productive forces. They don’t hire people, but they get rich in what [Karl] Marx and Rosa Luxemburg explained as primitive accumulation. Then there is the sector that we classify as predatory latifundia in Brazil, large landowners who go out into nature and appropriate it. In general, they operate on the agricultural frontier. But the agricultural frontier isn’t just in the Amazon, we have it in all the country’s states, in other words, wherever nature’s goods are in each state. 

For example, here in São Paulo, when governor Tarcísio [de Freitas] gives away public land practically for free, legalizing land grabbing in Pontal [Paranapanema], he is legitimizing this predatory latifundia that is going to get rich off of public land here. Or when we consider Nestlé, which appropriates water from the groundwater, it is appropriating a natural good that should belong to everyone, and accumulates an extraordinary profit. Then there’s the agribusiness model, sung in verse and prose every night on the Jornal Nacional. The people who finance the “agro is pop” propaganda are foreign banks and car companies. This is the agribusiness model and there is a great alliance between the banks and the transnational companies, which invest in large and medium-sized properties. 

So today we have 30,000 farmers over a thousand hectares who adopt agribusiness. And we also have some 300,000 small and medium-sized farmers, from 100 to 1,000 hectares, who also adopt the agribusiness model. These farmers only specialize in one product, make intensive use of agrochemicals, the use of transgenic seeds that they buy from a multinational there, the use of intensive mechanization, which they also buy from a multinational and they produce commodities for the foreign market.

So it’s a model that’s extemporaneous to the needs of the population. Then people keep saying that the Brazilian economy depends on agribusiness. Come on! It’s the Brazilian economy, the Brazilian state that finances agribusiness. And who is making money? 

These farmers, their political power is so great that they don’t pay any tax. In our studies, we take the case of corn and soy in agribusiness. Because Conab [the National Supply Company] calculates the cost of production every year by region. If you take an average, for soy, for example, 68% of the income produced goes back to the transnational companies that supply the inputs, which are the ones that earn the most.

It recently came to light that the capital accessed by agribusiness on the financial market is close to 1 trillion. So this Safra Plan money is a pittance. They don’t depend on it anymore. But it reveals the total dependence of agribusiness on financial capital, because then the companies advance their inputs, advance the seed, and then collect the income in products.

And the third model?

The third model is family farming, which goes back to our popular agrarian reform. Family farming, which is the model of the workers and not of capital, is not a model for accumulating capital. And obviously, in this model, the social class most interested is the peasantry, right? So, family farming is the model that peasants dedicate themselves to and which prioritizes the production of food for the domestic market. Agribusiness produces five products, five commodities: soy, corn, cotton, sugar cane, and extensive livestock farming. Family farming produces 367 different types of food. How much biodiversity is there in Brazil? Conab even bought these 367 types of food during Lula’s term in office, which is now still going strong. So these are real products—or commodities, if you like—that go to the domestic market. And given the diversity of our biomes and our size, this is why we have such a rich gastronomy.

And farmers generally use their own seed. And they know that they have to respect nature, that if they destroy it, if they don’t respect the water sources, they won’t produce. So family farming is a very respectful model, which seeks to produce in balance with nature. And today it employs 16 million family workers. Agribusiness, on the other hand, employs 4 million, 2 million of whom are temporary, working for three or four months during the harvest or planting season. And the latifundia hardly employ anyone, [there are] around 20,000 farmers who would be classified as predatory landowners. 

So that’s the scenario in Brazil. Unfortunately, Brazilian academia is not interested  in studying these differences. And, unfortunately, due to the nature of Lula’s current government, of the class composition in government, it is not aware of these differences, competing interests, and contradictions. So I’m tired of hearing ministers say that there is no incompatibility between family farming and agribusiness. You can live together in Brazilian society. One guy has a thousand hectares and the family farmer has ten hectares. It’s not this incompatibility, the incompatibility is in the model. Agribusiness using pesticides is incompatible with the ten-hectare neighbor who doesn’t use them, because they’ll contaminate and kill biodiversity. So the incompatibility is one of interests. Agribusiness wants commodities, it wants profit. Family farmers want food. And there’s an incompatibility in the technological model that can’t coexist. There’s no way. So these are rules of nature that, unfortunately, most ministers are not aware of and have no knowledge of. So when they go to defend public policies, they mix everything up. 

You draw attention to the fact that within agribusiness, there is an agriculture that would be more intelligent, the agriculture that is producing in an agroecological way. Considering that by producing in an agro-ecological way this agriculture aims for profit and not land expropriation or the discussion about food production, do you think a tactical alliance with them is possible? 

First, let’s characterize who they are. It’s difficult to quantify, not least because there are so few of them: 30,000 farmers with more than 1,000 hectares; then there’s that other part of the agribusiness, which is 300,000 [farmers that own less than 1,000 hectares]. It’s very difficult to quantify how many of them have split off.

But there is a political and ideological division within them—and one part supported Lula, [which] resulted in the appointment of Minister [of Agriculture Carlos] Fávaro. He is a legitimate representative of this part of agribusiness. Now, why did they split off? It’s not because of Lula’s beautiful eyes. It’s because the economic and agronomic contradictions of the agribusiness model have begun to cause damage. And the smartest ones, like Fávaro, Blairo Maggi and others, realized it. This model has no future from an agronomic and economic point of view. But they realize that 68% of the income goes to the multinationals. They only get 13%. So there’s a real contradiction there that the smartest people have realized. So they say, I have to spread it out, so they increase the size of the area. If I started with 10,000 hectares, then I’ll go to 11 or 12 thousand, until I reach Blairo Maggi, with 200,000 hectares. 

I’ll give you an example: every orange here in São Paulo is an agribusiness monoculture. It’s not such an important sector for the economy. That’s why it’s not in the top five [most produced in Brazil], because it’s very concentrated here in São Paulo and the south of Minas Gerais. Oranges, two or three years ago, suffered a huge loss, but they lost money on the harvest. Do you know why? Because there was a lack of rain. And why was there a lack of normal rain? Because other agribusinesses in the Amazon, in Mato Grosso, in Goiás, deforested and affected the rainfall cycle, which resulted in losses here in São Paulo. They’re starting to analyze it. So now they’re looking for solutions. I often read Valor Econômico, for example, which is their newspaper. That we now need ‘regenerative agriculture.’ That’s a new term, regenerate what? But it’s a fantasy they’re creating to try to adjust the agribusiness model to these contradictions. 

Well, is it possible for the peasantry to form an alliance with this sector that wants to split off? It’s possible. Our advantage in Brazil is that from the point of view of land distribution, there is a lot of land. So what do we say, even in our political discourse to society? Let’s start with the predatory latifundia, the largest properties that don’t produce, and expropriate them. With that, you’ve already incorporated millions of workers and with that agribusiness that wants to shift to agroecology, that wants to produce healthy food, they’re welcome. It’s not an alliance about the size of the property, the alliance is about the model. If they are self-critical and move towards another model that produces healthy food that doesn’t damage nature, we can do many things together. 

With the traditional model, there is an incompatibility. That’s why we debated it with the ministers. It’s incompatible. It’s not because I’m angry or not. It’s because it’s reality. You can’t think that a thousand hectares with pesticides, transgenic seeds, with machinery, without any workers, has anything to do with the neighbor with ten hectares. They are two incompatible models, they can’t live together. 

I’d like to ask you to talk a bit about the Lula government. Two months ago, in an interview with the Tutaméia program, you gave the Lula government a seven and the Minister of Agrarian Development Paulo Teixeira a five. After that, there was the announcement of the federal agrarian reform program “Terra de Gente” (People’s Land), which allocates prateleiras de terra (plots of land) and you even joked that the nails and wood were missing. I’d like to ask you to comment on the program and tell us if you’re keeping score.

The Lula government was elected by us and we have to defend it against its enemies. The enemies of the Lula government are the multinationals and financial capital. The predatory latifundia and part of agribusiness. They are Lula’s enemies. Now, the government as a whole is falling short of our expectations, of the working class in general. Why is that? Firstly, it’s a government entering a dilapidated state. Strictly speaking, since Dilma’s [Rousseff] second government, the entire politics of the bourgeoisie that controlled the state have been to reduce the government to a minimum state. Both by taking away workers’ rights and by reducing the public infrastructure. 

In ten years, they’re going to start a new hiring process . If you look at Incra’s National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform Needs, there will hire 700 new employees. Incra once had 12,000 employees during the dictatorship, now it has 4,000—and 1,000 of them are retiring. So to hire only 700 is ludicrous.

The Lula government has this problem of the cursed inheritance it received. It has the problem of composition, which is a government where the Frente Ampla (Broad Front) that is present managed to defeat Bolsonaro—and that was very important. But Lula’s having trouble implementing public policies to solve the population’s problems. That’s why his government isn’t getting more support. On the contrary, support is decreasing. What’s the reason? It’s because he’s not coming up with public policies to solve workers’ problems. 

In the countryside, I think our criticisms are mild. I’m no longer leading the movement, so I have to be careful not to speak for the movement’s real spokespeople. But the government isn’t doing anything about agrarian reform. It’s a disgrace. We’ve been at it for a year and a half and we’ve made no progress. Expropriation has not advanced. Credit for the settlers has not advanced, nor has Pronera. Pronera is the most civilizing thing any right-wing government can do because it enables young peasants to go to university. So it’s a disgrace. You can’t say there’s a lack of money. So, if before I gave [a score] of five because I was friends with Paulo Teixeira, now for the agrarian reform program, I give [a score] of three.

And what score do you give  the Terra da Gente program?

Or for all of it, because it’s a disgrace what’s happening. It’s become a government of events and social media. That doesn’t solve the problem. The people want to see problems solved, both in the suburbs and in rural areas. 

And with regard to policies to combat hunger, how do you see the Lula government’s policies? 

It’s a pittance. Food insecurity and poverty levels in the cities are visible to the naked eye. São Paulo has 70,000 people living on the streets, this has never happened before. So the hunger and needs of the people are glaring. And what is the way out of this? It’s nothing new either, nor is it something the MST does. On the consumption side, the Bolsa Família, the emergency fund for families. But that’s not the solution. The solution is employment and income. A more permanent measure is agrarian reform, because you take unproductive areas and start producing. We even argue that the areas to be expropriated from now on or bought have to be close to the city, so that food can get to the city quickly, more cheaply, and in better conditions. The Amazon is the agricultural frontier. It has to be left untouched. Expropriations have to be close to the city for the problem of food production. But the main instrument the government has—and it’s the result of historical experience—is the PAA [Food Acquisition Program]. So, in the past, in Lula’s second term, the PAA managed to administer R$2 billion. If you correct for inflation, that would be R$5 billion now. 

So, in fact, in order to operate in the market and provide cheap food, there have to be billions in the PAA. And the government isn’t doing that in its first year. Okay, it reactivated the program, which is already a good thing. It put in R$300 million, but that’s nothing: 44,000 family farmers had access to the PAA; there are 4 million of us. So the PAA has to reach 4 million. Everything that is produced, we should buy and buy at a fair price. So I hope someone from the government reads this interview.

The PAA is fundamental, billions have to be put into it. And if it doesn’t happen now, it will happen later, as happened with Rio Grande do Sul. Rio Grande will cost Brazilian society R$40 billion. If we had encouraged family farming there, instead of soy monoculture, it wouldn’t have come to this. And it could be reproduced in other states. 

Ten years ago you said that the Dilma government chickened out when it came to agrarian reform. Is the Lula government chickening out  too?

That’s a bit of a pejorative expression. Dilma’s second term did nothing. Her government did nothing about agrarian reform. Now I repeat that the government is in debt. It’s been there for a year and a half and hasn’t delivered anything. I’m not blaming the president. I’m blaming the government as a whole, which isn’t taking action and the problems are growing. And the base starts complaining and says: “We struggled for four years to defeat Bolsonaro.”

Beyond land expropriation, what does the MST need to increase its food production?

Family farming faces many challenges for the future. Agroecology requires more labor, it requires creole seeds. But for this agroecology to reach 4 million family farmers and produce a lot of food for everyone, they have to produce at scale. 

How do you produce at scale in ten hectares? 

The two big challenges we have are agricultural machinery for farmers and organic fertilizers. And that hasn’t been solved. That’s why the MST is partnering with China, to see if we can bring the technology that the Chinese have, because they’ve already adopted it, especially in the last 30 years. So that is the big challenge we have in this next period, and it’s not just the government’s challenge, it’s the challenge of the productive forces. We have to make machine factories for peasants. 

Is this partnership with China for the production of organic fertilizer or for harvesting technology?

Both. The Chinese have developed organic fertilizer technology, which looks like this: you take the organic matter you have in the city, the leftovers from our food, from the restaurant or the market or the supermarket and use it as compost. Composting by the forces of nature takes a year, a year and a half to turn into fertilizer. The Chinese discovered in the laboratory how to speed up the bacteria that transform organic matter. So they can do in 12 days what nature does in a year and a half. This solves the landfill problem and produces fertilizer. And the Chinese are willing to pass this technology on to us.

And we’re testing the machines. The first one arrived in November 2023, and we tested it on rice in Rio Grande do Norte, which coincided with the harvest, and now we’re taking it to Maranhão. It’s wonderful. Peasants in Maranhão have stopped planting rice because they don’t have anyone to harvest it. To harvest by hand, the farmer would go crazy, he would die. And it’s a tiny little machine. We want to bring the factory that makes these machines. Even the Maranhão government is willing to enter into this partnership. There are at least ten machines that will be very useful to us. So, in our eyes, now is the time to bring in this technology, it’s going to be a revolution to increase the scale of agroecology and the production of healthy food. 

In your 40 years with the MST, what ideas have you personally left behind and what have you kept with you? Are you still a catholic, a corinthian and a socialist?

More than a Catholic, I think I’m a Christian because I believe in the ideas of the Gospel. Churches in general are crap, they’ve become an instrument of power that has nothing to do with our faith. For me, I don’t need a church to believe in something. 

And as I said in the first question, it’s difficult to make a more precise assessment. I think we could have put more energy into training militants. The number of schools we have is still too few, we could have put more energy into Pronera. Six thousand students is not enough for Brazil. It had to be a program to get 100,000, 200,000 young people who live in the settlements into university. I think we were also slow to adopt agroecology. In the beginning, with the productivist idea of the classic agrarian reform, we thought that just having a tractor and an agro-industry would do the trick. It’s not enough.

And I regret that there is little theoretical elaboration on the defense of nature, on ecology. There are few cadres worldwide who contribute to this. Because we have few cadres in this area of defending nature and defending agroecology, with scientific knowledge and with this class perspective.

Edited by João Carlos

Translated by Milena Polini/ Revised by Eduardo Rodríguez