15 years ago a group of Brazilian families has unused arable land occupied. From the contaminated soils of today’s healthy fields.
As Jonas de Souza sat for the first Time set foot on the arable land on the Brazilian coast, he found himself in the middle of a Wasteland, in a nearly dead Area. Everywhere empty bottles of plant protection were through, the floor was completely ruined.
“In the earth, much of life is normally,” says de Souza. “But here, it was almost impossible to find even a single living worm. Just as the rivers in which there were no more fish. And all because of the pesticides. The have it all contaminated.”
That was in 2003. De Souza was part of a group of a total of twenty families who wanted to occupy the neglected land. The reason for the poor state farms, was the year-long, one-sided load by the huge beef. These were also responsible for the rapid loss of Species in the Atlantic rain forest that grows here.
However, you could do something that was Souza for sure. You would have to start to manage soils sustainably, to give the forest new life. This approach seems to be working. The Jose Lutzenberger-Camp, as the settlement of twenty families, who blooms and grows a variety of different plants. It makes its name all honor – Jose Lutzenberger was a well-known Brazilian environmentalists .
Twenty tons of food crops to the camp residents in the month. Whether coffee or cabbage, and everything grows without the use of pesticides. 90 percent of the earnings go as a part of the free lunch table at public schools. The Rest is sold either in the market or for own needs.
Bananas are just one of the dozens of species that are cultivated by the family successfully
Agriculture revived, the nature
In order to make the Land at all to cultivate the land, the camp’s residents on traditional farming methods, in harmony with the Ecosystem. They began, for example, so that, again, Inga trees to plant in the Region.
These fast-growing trees with their characteristic seed pods provide shade for coffee plants, which survive with less water. Most of the trees had been cut down by the cattle breeders. In their place, grasses as animal feed is sown, which did not normally grow in the northeast of Brazil.
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In time, the animals returned. This, says Souza, is a sure sign that it go to the forest. “Here, more and more types, from small pigs up to all kinds of birds. Meanwhile, larger animals have a look, we had already jaguars.”
In the meantime, people can drink here, even from your river. “This forest is today one of the best preserved in the country,” says Katya Isaguirre. The Professor of environmental works law at the Federal University of Parana. They observed the Region of the camp of twenty families, since 2013.
“Here it is quite different than in the high-tech agriculture, there are neither people nor nature,” said Isaguirre.
Life has not only returned to the earth, but also in the trees. The community sees more and more often even jaguars.
Large corporations or family farms?
The Lutz Burger Camp is part of a conflict, in which two basic ideas. Each claims to understand agriculture at the best.
The a side sees a future in the so-called Latifundios. This refers to large farms, often belonging to multinational groups and the mainly grow mono-crops of soy for Export, for example.
On the other hand, the advocates of family-based agriculture. According to the Brazilian Institute for geography and statistics, these make up 84.4% of all farms in the country.
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“There is a dispute to alternative production routes. But also about how these are mediated to the people,” says Nurit Rachel bensusan is working for the Brazilian environmental organization, ISA.
“On the one hand, it is said, that the agricultural industry is the future of our country. About 70 percent of the food from the family but operated.”
Bensusans organization was part of a Jury that the Lutz Berger Camp in 2017, characterized by Juliana Santilli price, an award for sustainable agriculture and nature conservation.
“The people there have set themselves against all odds to defend, if this were the institutional hurdles, the violation of their rights, or even physical violence,” says bensusan is.
Agriculture in mono-cultures has devastating effects on the environment, destabilize the soil and destroy the habitat of plants and animals
“Bible, beef and bullets”
Jonas de Souza is a member of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), according to his own statement, the largest social movement in Brazil. She is since the 1980s, small farmers occupy the Latifundios.
This is because these large farms do not meet the “social function”, say the MST activists. And you can see on the side of the law, because the Brazilian law allows the Landless to occupy areas that are either ertraglos or, how not to meet large-scale farms, according to the MST, its “social function”.
The occupants of the land owners, large farmers and politicians of the so-called “bible, beef and bullets” Committee to. The combines in the Brazilian Congress of Evangelical Christians, the farm lobby and legislators with those who advocate for less stringent gun laws. In their eyes, the tamper, and harm the economy.
The Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro suggested in a speech last year to kill the “invaders” of the MST “” because you disabled the agricultural industry. Bolsonaro has won the first round of the elections, and with good chances on the presidential post. He is also referred to as the Brazilian Donald Trump.
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It is therefore not surprising that the Lutz Berger Camp had in the first five years after its founding, considerable problems: The beef breeders, to whom the Land actually belonged to, wanted nothing to do with the idea to use your country social and environmental. Again and again, the environmental police in the Camp, residents were arrested. Your absence use the employee of the beef farmer, the family infect accommodations. Regular work was hard to think that some of the families gave up.
But all of the hostility, in Spite of it had become to stay the will get stronger, so de Souza. “We knew that we have to fight to stay. Another way to see it.”
As of 2008, efforts began to bear fruit. The was also people that had not to do directly with the Camp. Fishing communities and Indigenous people began to support the work of the squatters. The stronger this support was, the less attacks there were. Meanwhile,the number of people who want to be part of the group of activists grows. Maybe ten new families to come soon.
“I wish for the future that also other how we can achieve despite all the difficulties, progress, and at the same time protect the environment,” says de Souza. “I am convinced that we can change our society to a new relationship with the earth, the water and the forest.”
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