The Business of Hunger” and “Brazil’s Land Revolution”

Government Movie Summary #2

Jaisal Noor

The two movies watched: “The Business of Hunger” and “Brazil’s Land Revolution” were two excellent examples of film makers advocating change to the current economic situation by raising awareness of current issues. The “Business of Hunger” touches upon the effects of imposition of the neo-liberal order on various Third World countries around the globe, where as “Brazil’s land revolution” discusses the factors that lead to the rise of land reform in Brazil, and its consequences.

In “The Business of Hunger” discusses how the lowering of trade barriers and the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies in African, Asian and South American countries has been devastating for the local economies. Because the neo-liberal order dictates an export- oriented economy, focusing on Third World countries providing cheap goods to Western countries, the production of these countries focuses on goods that are in demand, and not necessarily useful for the local populations.

With the constant price fluxations inherent in a market economy, many lower income farmers and peasants are driven off their land when the commodity price of their export drops. If that wasn’t bad enough, government collaboration with multi-national corporations has also forced many peasants off their lands to make room for their agribusiness farms. The peasants that are left use techniques that within a few crops ruin the soil, and so they are forced to move on.

The last part of the movie focuses on resistance to these desperate conditions. Some of the forms that are covered include farming collectives in Mexico, that provide farmers to use modern technology to provide social justice and economic freedom for themselves. Another is the group ‘Bread for the World’ which uses taxes on imported goods to fund awareness raising campaigns, to raise concerns about the origins of the food.

In the second video, Brazil’s Land Revolution, filmmakers deal with the new phenomena of land reform that is taking place all over Brazil. They discuss how in a country that has the 10^th largest economy in the world there exist conditions of extreme inequality of distribution or land and wealth, and conditions where half the arable land is owned by less than 1% percent of the population. Lula has declared that he plans to house more than 100,000 families, and spend more than $100 million dollars on land reforms.

This land credit program though, as the film reveals, is not enough not for people in the province of Bahia. They organized an alternative to the government, called the MST. The members of this group occupy unused arable land, plant their own crops, and are able to feed themselves. And when surplus crops exist, they are able to sell them on the market to raise spending money for the community. This way, the group argues, one does not have to give up their land, if they are unable to pay back the government loans.

These groups are fighting what the neo-liberal order is trying to impose, : the “self-regulating market demands nothing less that the institutional separation of society into economic and political sphere (Polanyi, 23).” The response of the group Bread for the World, is to use the model of resistance presented in “Activists Without Borders”, by Keck and Sikkink . They use native groups in the affected third world areas to gain knowledge about their situations. They then use information politics in their local American communities, and use this awareness and concern to gain popular support to use leverage and accountability politics towards their local and state representatives to take action(Keck & Sikkink, 371-375). This action can take various forms, including pressure on third world governments, new, fairer trade laws being passed in the united States and increased pressure and regulation

The MST group and the Mexican farm collective would be an excellent example of “Globalization from Below”(Falk, 46). In a political environment that is not responding to these specific citizen’s needs, as Falk argues, it is necessary to work outside of the government and take matters into one’s own hands. It would also be an excellent example of Walden Bellow’s idea’s taken into action. For example, as Bellow would argue, the farmers need to focus on internal development, land reform, and locally made democratic decisions (Bellow, 498). Although Lula has taken some steps toward filling these goals, the MST is an excellent example of a group following Bellow’s goals, through Falk’s methods, exerting pressure from below and avoiding the political system all together. MST and the Mexican farmers would also find solidarity among the Zapatistas and Subcomandate Marcos(Marcos, 258), who much like the MST occupy unused land and use it to provide for their own communities and independent of transnational markets.

Finally, the MST, the cooperative farmers and even president Lula are taking Samir Amin’s concerns as voiced in “The New Agrarian Issue” seriously. He asks: “what will happen to the billions of peasants who are not competitive” in the global agriculture market?(Amin, 227). The steps taken by these different groups try to incorporate his suggestions of national “food autonomy”, implemented at the local level(Amin, 229) for third world countries. Although the Green Revolution has left them behind as a whole, the Mexican cooperative that uses modern technology while still sharing profits must be the model for future development if this population of billions of peasants is to survive.