Aloisio Milani and Lana Cristina
Repoirters - Agência Brasil

Brasília – In 1979 an international conference on land reform, or agrarian reform, and rural development took place in Rome. A final document from that conference, known as the Campesino Letter, contained a number of proposals, few of which were ever implemented.

Next week, more than twenty-seven years later, the 2nd International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development will take place in Brazil. Members of local social movements and organizations are busy preparing for the event with the objective of pressuring the Brazilian government to be more active in favor of land reform, access to ownership of land and water resources, and in dealing with the problems of food sovereignty, training and education for rural inhabitants, and strengthening rural communities.

According to Milton Rondo Filho, at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, this second conference, dealing with a "lost debate" at the UN, must be seen as a new phase following two decades of neoliberalism in many parts of the world.

"This is an important issue at the moment in many countries, especially in the South, and maybe in some in the North as well. As a result of the enormous concentration of income resulting from so many years of neoliberalism, it is almost certain that there has been an negative impact in the rural sector," said Rondo Filho, as he promised that the matter would be discussed at the Porto Alegre conference next week.

Translation: Allen Bennett