Brazilians say they can learn from Canadian agricultural co-operatives, even if some of those lessons are what not to do.
Canadian farm co-operatives are disappearing and farm size is growing, but Brazilian members of a two-week national tour ending April 23 say they can still profit from the Canadian co-op and supply management models.
On the tour sponsored by the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace was the leader of the Brazilian organization known popularly as the Landless Movement, or MST, whose members have set up small agrarian communities on land owned by large farms or the government.
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Francisco Dal’chiavon said the MST has worked to establish 800 small farm co-operatives with 500,000 farm families across Brazil. He said the type of small farm co-ops that were created by Canadian farmers in the past is a goal for many of the Brazilian co-ops.
Speaking through an interpreter while attending the Saskatoon Western Canadian Livestock Expo April 21, Dal’chiavon said “we want to do what you did, not go where you are now going.”
Brazilian agriculture is dominated by large farms, especially in the newly developed regions in the north.
“They are corporations who look after a few farmers and make low wage jobs for a few more. What Brazil needs is land for the small farmers and to establish co-ops that can make these small farmers economically efficient,” he said.
Dal’chiavon said that after visiting Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba, he was surprised to find that Canadian farmers are turning away from co-ops and that many of the co-ops had become “tightly focused on profits and don’t seem to place much emphasis on social or community goals.
“A small farm on the Prairies has a gross income of $500,000. That is too much to imagine in Brazil and maybe too much in general,” he said.
“At that size you must always grow bigger and even though you have the co-ops you still choose to chase people out of agriculture here. But you still have very good co-ops and are very efficient and that is what we need to learn to do more of.”
Dal’chiavon said Canadian models for supply management in milk and poultry, as well as the orderly marketing of grain through the Canadian Wheat Board, are also systems of farmer co-operation that his organization and the Brazilian government would like to emulate.
Also on the tour was the president of the Brazilian government owned agricultural commodity supply corporation CONAB, which establishes commodity floor prices in that country.
Luis Carlos Guedes Pinto said the Canadian tour was “about us developing an understanding of how small farms in Canada survive and how the government can support that.
“We could develop supply management systems like Canada has and I believe it would work.”
In the past, Brazil relied on a system of variable tariffs, complex import licensing and government operated marketing boards and floor prices to support domestic agriculture. Economic and trade pressures eroded this system and since the 1990s commodity prices and production practices have been scaled up to meet international market levels.
CONAB used to stabilize prices for corn and rice by holding huge domestic stocks in storage.
Today, Pinto’s organization still sets some floor prices but mainly is in the business of providing producers with marketing loans that are paid for by delivering commodities direct to CONAB.
That organization has replaced floor prices with a system of auctions that sell commodities when they fall below set prices. CONAB then pays the producer the difference between the established minimum and sale prices. This generally only applies to wheat, cotton, corn and rubber.
Pinto said the Canadian supply management system might be more effective at ensuring producers receive their fair share of market prices.
He said the Brazilian government hopes to work with Canada at the next round of World Trade Organization talks in opposition to “subsidizing nations like the United States and EU.”
Dal’chiavon said Canada and Brazil are both under pressure internationally.
“The only way we can compete with their subsidies is to have very large farms. … The effect globally is to drive Brazilians and Canadians off the land and into poverty in the cities.”
The six members of the delegation were hosted by the National Farmers Union, a sister organization of the MST through its membership in the international Via Campesina federation that is dedicated to preserving the family farm.
