Development, 2011, 54(1), (49–54)
r 2011 Society for International Development 1011-6370/11
www.sidint.net/development/
Thematic Section
La Via Campesina: Peasant-led agrarian reform
and food sovereignty
FAUSTINO TORREZ*
ABSTRACT Faustino Torrez summarizes the findings of the Agrarian
Reform Commission of La Via Campesina, an international peasant
movement that initiated the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform.
The process included a global encounter with the landless peoples in
San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the La Via Campesina conferences, and
the global fora in Valencia and Porto Alegre. La Via Campesina has
been developing a new concept of agrarian reform that recognizes
the socio-environmental aspects of land, the sea and natural
resources, in the context of food sovereignty. Integral agrarian
reform encompasses policies of redistribution, just, equitable access
and control of natural, social and productive resources (credit,
appropriate technologies, health, education, social security etc.) by
peasants and their families, indigenous people, landless workers,
artisanal fisherfolk, pastoralists, the unemployed, Dalit communities,
Afrodescendents and other rural peoples. He argues that
development policies should be based on agro-ecological strategies
centred on family and peasant agriculture and artisanal fishing;
trade policies that oppose dumping of products in the market and
favour peasant and family farm production oriented towards local,
national and international markets; and public policies in the areas
of education, health and infrastructure for the countryside that
complement trade and other policies.
KEYWORDS integral agrarian reform; World Bank; land grabbing;
peasantry; food sovereignty
The origins of agrarian reform
Throughout history, the struggle for land, space and territory has included the need to
secure access to and control of natural resources. Agrarian reform dates back to the
end of the eighteenth century. There have been two dominant modes of agrarian reform:
the capitalist agrarian reform, which created internal markets for national industrial
development and transformed landless farmers into independent entrepreneurs.
Second, the socialist agrarian reform which redistributed land to farmers in the context
of changes to the capitalist mode of production and included the nationalization and
collectivization of land and the means of production.
Development (2011) 54(1), 49–54. doi:10.1057/dev.2010.96
Development 54(1): Thematic Section
Both modes of agrarian reform programme had
specific characteristics determined by the historical conditions of the countries and the degree
of organizing among their peasantry leading to
diverse experiences in democratization of land,
poverty reduction and levels of rural inequalities.
In the developing countries, with rare exceptions, there has not been true agrarian reform
due to the number of poor people and the clash between different models of agrarian reform. It is important to broaden our concept of agrarian
reform so that our understanding of territory
includes fishing, forests and pastoralism. La Via
Campesina sees agrarian reform as a concern for
all of humanity and searches for new ways of
understanding agriculture based on peasant perspectives with indigenous visions of the cosmos.
The World Bank (WB) and agrarian
reform
50
For decades, the WB ignored the subject of unjust
land distribution and the need to implement integrated agrarian reform in many countries of
the South. However, in the mid-1990s, the WB
announced a change in its policies to prioritize
poverty reduction and redistributive land reform
through the market known as ‘negotiated’ or
‘market-assisted agrarian reform’.
This approach, while it opens up certain opportunities, fails to guarantee integral and broad
agrarian reform that affirms the right of peasant
families to access land and other productive
resources. Furthermore, the manner in which
the Bank is applying this model not only ignores
peasant land struggles but also threatens to
reverse the gains these social forces have achieved
in the name of agrarian reform.
Since the implementation of structural adjustment programmes and the spread of economic
globalization, governments have implemented
models of agrarian reform based on the Bank’s
‘market-assisted agrarian reform’ with which it
hopes to substitute traditional models where the
state has the direct responsibility of carrying out
agrarian reform, through expropriation.
In many countries, the reforms promoted by
the WB resulted in the privatization of lands
and other natural resources, and new waves of
concentration of land ownership. The policies
create markets where land is bought and sold,
and where peasants are hurt both ways. Under
economic conditions inimical to small farmers,
there are massive distress sales to the wealthy.
And under programmes to give credit to the poor
to buy land from the wealthy, peasants incur heavy debt burdens for the purchase of low quality
land at inflated prices. Thus ‘market assisted
agrarian reform’ results in a spiral of land loss
and debt for peasants, who finally are expelled
into misery.
An alternative view promoted by La Via
Campesina is that agrarian reform is not only
about (re)distributing land but should also have
a strong connection with broad-based human
development, employment generation and food
sovereignty.
Agrarian reform for world poverty
reduction
The failure to implement integral agrarian reform
is a problem of all society. Most urban and
migration problems are a direct consequence of
the failure of agricultural reform. An integral
agrarian reform would achieve food production,
job creation, and especially, social stability ^ and
thus true peace.
Current agrarian reform has led to the impoverishment of peasants and indigenous peoples. The
‘failure’of development banks and the destruction
of natural resources is not the fault of the people
who live on the land but of government policies
that have led to the current environmental and
economic disaster. Small land owners have to be
understood as the subjects and protagonists of
their own development.
The global campaign for agrarian reform
The Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform (GCAR)
was launched in 1999 by La Via Campesina and
FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN)
(www.fian.org); more recently the Land Research
Action Network (www.landaction.org) has joined
the campaign, in order to jointly reinforce the
Torrez: Peasant-led Agrarian Reform
struggle for agrarian reform and access to land as
a prerequisite to realizing the landless peasant
families’ right to adequate food. Agrarian reform
implies a long-term commitment since land reform aims to change central institutions of society
as well as the relationship among its different
actors.
The leadership of the Campaign for Global
Agrarian Reform has been recognized by various
sectors such as peasant organizations, researchers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
donor agencies, certain levels of governments
and international agencies such as FAO and the
WB as the principal network of civil society that
has monitored and lobbied for land issues. The
GCAR is a network of organizations dedicated to
land-related issues, for the purpose of making
agrarian reform a priority in the agenda of social
movements, NGOs, government agencies, and
governments. The GCAR has gathered valuable
knowledge and experience to support local and
national struggles for agrarian reform.
The Emergency Network and Investigative
Missions have turned out to be essential tools for
denouncing human rights violations related to
the struggle for land and the defense of territory.
The letters of support and visits have been highly
appreciated. In some cases, the interventions have
had immediate positive effects for the peasants
involved. In most cases, concrete change requires
long-term support but the exchange of information and experiences has been extremely successful in developing forms of action and reinforcing
the global movement for agrarian reform.
international migration. The principle of land as
social property and not individual property needs
to be defended. Land speculation must be prohibited and capitalist corporations (industrial, commercial and financial) should be prevented from
acquiring large extensions of land, especially
through land grabbing.
Genuine and integral agrarian reform has
democratized agrarian structures and changed
the relations of economic and political power that
causes land concentration. Such an agrarian
reform should prohibit the commoditization of
the right to produce and should (re)introduce
control of overproduction, limiting exports and
dumping, and should guarantee food sovereignty.
Redistributive policy implies, above all, the
expropriation of private lands that serve no social
purpose. The goal should be to redistribute land
and power, altering the relations of power in
society in favour of farmers and the coalitions
that support them. Such an agrarian reform
cannot be carried out through market mechanisms. Past agrarian reforms had favoured one
sector over the others. Future agrarian reforms
must balance the needs of peasants and family
farmers with those of fisherfolk, indigenous
people, the landless, pastoralists and other rural
peoples, and must be true agrarian reform that
guarantees these peoples’ total access to and
control over the land and its resources. It must be
an agrarian reform that gives legal guarantees
to peasants who have occupied lands to survive;
an agrarian reform that guarantees communal
land ownership and that is designed to resist the
threat of counter-agrarian reform.
The agrarian reform required
Genuine and integral agrarian reform would be
based on a hybrid cosmovision that incorporates
space, territory, water and biodiversity; an agrarian reform that begins with a wide process of
distribution of land and/or the defense of territory.
The possession and use of land should be subordinated to the principal that rights to land accrue
only to those who work it, depend on it and reside
on it with their family. Agrarian reform should enable the reinsertion of peasants onto their lands;
this would also serve to regulate rural^urban and
Toward a new focus for agrarian reform
To transcend classical agrarian reform, land has
to be understood as more than a means of production, and should incorporate notions of space,
territory and cosmovision. Rural development
should not come from the city with its production
systems led by multinational corporations. Rural
communities need their own model of agriculture,
based on a different vision. The countryside
cannot keep looking toward the city; it is not
sustainable for all people to live a city lifestyle. It
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Development 54(1): Thematic Section
is important to face the damage of consumerist
culture and lifestyles.
An integral agrarian reform would incorporate
the best of peasant life, including both the
traditional and modern practices in ways that
make the leadership of rural women and youth
more visible. A practical vision requires that we
understand what is happening today, so that we
can project into tomorrow. Currently, there are
contradictory trends towards decreasing peasant
agriculture in many places because of the territorial logic of agribusiness and increased peasantry
in other areas because of migration. There is a
farm crisis due to loss of young people in the countryside and the advancing age of farmers.
The neo-liberal economic system has made
peasant and family farm agriculture unviable.
Peasant families have had to combine multiple
activities, with men selling their labour and the
women assuming the role of sustaining agriculture. Women take a lead in the fight to preserve
the peasant roots as the first step towards recovering our autonomy and building food sovereignty.
It is important to defend a model of peasant, family and indigenous production that combats the
commoditization of life.
When the WB and most governments speak of
agrarian reform, they do not support peasant land
occupations but the credit schemes to buy land.
This reinforces the private property paradigm
and inevitably leads to the concentration of land
in the hands of capitalist ownership and disastrous consequences for peasants and nature.
Breaking out of the disastrous neo-liberal model
requires rethinking the entire property regime of
any country.
La Via Campesina has held a collective reflection to rethink agrarian reform (see Table 1).
Table 1. Issues and challenges for agrarian reform
1. Refine concept of new integral agrarian reform
K
Initiate a process of consultation with the grassroots about land tenure, as part of a
different educational project
K
Understand titles and how they were obtained historically
K
Launch an informational campaign and a public debate with society
K
Incorporate the issue of gender
K
Pass laws that ban large estates
K
Develop the concept of ‘integral’ reform
2. Space, land and territory
K
Defense of space and territory
K
Balance agricultural, forestry and livestock and other land uses by rural peoples
K
Individual property vs collective property
K
Secure collective tenure
3. Occupation, recuperations and defense of land and territory
K
Carry out simultaneous land occupations in various provinces
K
Mass mobilization
K
Recover the spiritual and symbolic values of land and territory
K
Take action to expel the large corporations that occupy our agricultural land
52
4. Gender and youth
K
Hold debates on strategies that ensure equity and parity
Torrez: Peasant-led Agrarian Reform
Table 1. (continued )
5. Resistance to privatization, agrarian counter-reforms, and neo-liberal policies
K
Fortify our informational spaces to communicate our analyses and actions
K
No to the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund
6. Resistance to the dominant model of production and development
K
Opt for a model of local peasant production
K
Food sovereignty
K
Fortify the exchange and development of alternative production experiences
7. Resistance to criminalization of social protest and militarization
K
Inform about repressive actions against our people to bring them into the light on the
world scene
K
Work on the collective conscience to resist military repression
K
Coordinate our actions
8. Build alliances
K
With indigenous people and peasant organizations
K
Establish alliances with organizations that have a clear struggle against capitalism and
imperialism, and with urban sectors and other social forces
K
Alliances that contribute to the project of agrarian reform and the new agricultural
model.
K
Alliances that fortify the articulation of social movements
K
Alliances with NGOs but identify these as tactical, not strategic
K
With intellectuals, agricultural technicians, small farmers, consumers, universities
K
Use La Via Campesina as a good example of a policy of alliances to be established in
other sectors
9. Put an end to land grabbing
K
Ban land speculation
K
Prohibit private ownership of large tracts of land
Land grabbing
With land grabbing there is a return to a colonialstyle scheme of using large tracts of lands for
agribusiness, mining, multinational plantations,
etc. They concentrate huge amounts of land, many
of which could be used in agrarian reform and
food production, for these capitalist endeavours.
This exacerbates the poor distribution of land and
the process of reconcentration in the hands of the
few, in this case, multinational corporations
which promote monoculture of soy, sugar cane
and eucalyptus in Brazil, African oil palm in
Colombia and Indonesia, jatropha, and grain for
export in many countries etc. These corporations
displace and evict poor families, pollute rivers
and privatize the access to water, putting the life
and livelihoods of peasants at risk. The corporations are buying and invading communal and
family lands historically used for food production.
Thus, land grabbing is an aggravating cause of
the food crisis, along with speculation and the
results of the application of the technology of
the Green Revolution (degrading the productive
capacity of farm land) and the policies of commercial agriculture at the world level.
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Development 54(1): Thematic Section
Criminalization of struggle
For decades, peasants and indigenous people of
the world have been united to struggle for agrarian reform, and to recover and defend their territories and have been imprisoned or outlawed.
This criminalization and repression of the struggle for agrarian reform, involving the police, the
army, and the private security of corporations,
translates into ssassinations, judicial persecution. There is a high level of impunity because
nothing is investigated nor are the responsible
parties punished despite evidence. Such is the
case in Brazil, Indonesia, Honduras, Bangladesh
etc. In Guatemala in October 2010, two community leaders were assassinated, Adolfo
Ichich Chaman and Orlando Boror Set, and the
human rights lawyer and defender of indigenous
* Translated from Spanish by Ronald Nigh.
54
communities, Fausto Otzin Poyon was killed by
multinational mining companies.
Conclusion
La V|¤ a Campesina has been an important space of
struggle in which peasants, family farmers, the
landless, and indigenous peoples have encountered
each others’ cosmovisions. From this space, they
are evolving a new concept of integral agrarian
reform and the defense and sharing of territories.
In this struggle, they confront land grabbing,
neo-liberal policies such as market-assisted land
reform, and the criminalization of social protest.
In the process, they are forging a unified struggle
for true agrarian reform as a pillar in the construction of food sovereignty.