NO LAND, NO CLIMATE

Food that nourishes and has a face, memory, and territory: stories of those who sustain Brazil

COP30 exposed the contradictions between ‘agro pop’ and family farming. While agribusiness dominates the narrative and the official stages, those who truly feed Brazil resist under violence, lack of public policies, and invisibility — but continue to prove, in practice, that another model is possible.

Steffanie Schmidt

from the Varadouros of Belém (PA) 

For decades, agribusiness has managed to monopolize the narrative that it is what feeds Brazil and sustains the national economy. This leading role was even reinforced within COP30, where Embrapa and the federal government set up an exclusive space — AgriZone — to present to the world the “sustainable solutions of tropical agriculture.” Stages, panels, communication campaigns, low-carbon technologies, crop-livestock integration — all carefully packaged to show that Brazilian agribusiness is modern, green, and essential.

But outside these more polished settings, another story emerged. And unlike the marketing of agribusiness, this story was told by those who truly put food on people’s tables: family farmers, extractivists, coconut breakers, forest peoples, communal kitchens, rural settlements, farmers from the Cerrado and the Amazon.

At COP30, they not only made their presence felt — they fed real people. From the food provided at the People’s Summit to the Sociobiodiversity Restaurant, and the banquet-rally (Banquetaço), a fact that Brazil insists on ignoring became evident: the existence of people who work, plant, and harvest under pressure, conflict, and the absence of structural public policies.

From these food establishments, stories that rarely receive attention emerged. We found several and have listed some below:

Marly Viana Barroso and Antônia Ferreira dos Santos, both around 70 years old, were murdered and raped while leaving for work in the municipality of Novo Repartimento, in the southeastern region of Pará. They were family-based extractivists, a legal activity recognized by law — nº 11.326/2006, which defines the National Policy for Family Farming — based on the collection and processing of the fruit, developed in traditional communities. This is the reality faced by those who produce food that reaches the tables of Brazilians in the country.

“Harvesting is permitted by law, even on private land, but often rural landowners prohibit access, ignoring this right. The way they were murdered says a lot about the situation experienced by those who protect the forest and defend the climate,” stated Socorro Almeida, an activist with the Slow Food movement, responsible for remembering the workers’ names during COP30.

Novo Repartimento is known for its agrarian conflicts and the intense presence of agribusiness and mining. “It’s a modern-day banditry scenario. We cannot maintain the invisibility of traditional women workers, even in spaces that discuss climate justice and socio-environmental rights,’ she stated.

With 30 years of experience in the family farming movement, Raimundo Rodrigues Xavier, 64, continues to defend the production of real food and the preservation of standing forests, even without incentives and public policies. At the Global Climate March in Belém, he made a point of joining so many other voices that are calling for justice: environmental, climate, reparations, and, above all, recognition.

“We are part of family farming, and we also want investment so that our farmers can preserve the forest and live, live in the forest, which is important for the whole world,” he says.

The President of the Rural Workers’ Union of Medicilândia, in Pará, he represents a core of resistance in the middle of the Trans-Amazonian Highway: the municipality is known as the “national capital of cocoa” and the largest producer in Brazil, with about 50,000 tons of cocoa beans per harvest, responsible for the livelihood of more than 90% of the population. Production is mostly sustainable.

He represents the more than 10.1 million family farmers who, despite a lack of incentives, recognition, and public policy, produce and feed a large portion of Brazilian households.

Although family farming comprises the majority of agricultural establishments in Brazil (77%), it receives the smallest share of credit, technical assistance, and public attention. It produces over 64% of the food, sourced from only 23% of the country’s arable land. And even without all the resources dedicated to agriculture, for example, it still accounts for 10% of the national GDP and is the livelihood of more than 10 million people in rural areas. https://ojoioeotrigo.com.br/2023/06/saiba-de-onde-vem-sua-comida/](https://ojoioeotrigo.com.br/2023/06/saiba-de-onde-vem-sua-comida/ 

Throughout his 30 years of involvement in the movement, Mr. Raimundo Xavier affirms that he never thought of giving up: “The fight for those who defend what is good, the Amazon, and the right to live well in Brazil is what drives us,” he replies with a smile and a hug at the close of the Global Climate March.

This reality also materializes in cities. ”If God gave you the land, why don’t you plant?” Alzira Silva, founder of Irmãs da Horta (Sisters of the Garden), transformed despair and hunger into a network for the transformation of women through community gardens in the greater Belém area (PA). And she made a point of sharing the fruits of her labor during the banquet-rally, a public event in favor of food sovereignty through family farming.

She and other organizations such as the MST (Landless Rural Workers’ Movement), Rural Women’s Associations, Slow Food Movement, Greenpeace Brazil, and Gastromotiva served “real food,” produced without pesticides, in agroforestry, community, and peri-urban areas. The menu that marked the closing of the People’s Summit at COP 30 included lamb, goat, pirarucu (a type of fish), shrimp, and a range of spices and vegetables, right in the Republic Square, in front of the Teatro da Paz, in Belém.

Created five years ago, the project began when Zira and her children, facing hunger and 11 years of depression, decided to plant at home. With few resources, they worked as farmhands to save money and set up an urban garden — a costly initiative for those without steady employment.

The first garden was a success and brought about transformation: “I saw that I, a single mother, could have a dignified life and provide better conditions for my children,” says Zira. The success inspired other women in similar situations. Today, the Sisters of the Garden project has branches in Outeiro, Acará, in the interior of Pará, as well as in the Condor neighborhood of Belém, connecting families who have found in urban agriculture an alternative source of income, health, and dignity.

“There are things that make you feel ashamed. Like, if you’re poor and you start to change your life, it seems like someone wants to silence you,” she laments.

Even today, those of us who advocate for clean and fair production lack investment. “We cannot and do not want to cut down the forest, but to preserve it, we need to survive. The forest lives with us inside it,” says Mr. Raimundo Xavier, a leader from Medicilândia (PA).

Family farming produces more than 60% of the food that reaches Brazilian tables — such as cassava, milk, vegetables, and a good portion of rice, corn, coffee, and poultry — but it remains invisible, with little support and is frequently attacked.

The total amount of resources allocated by BNDES for the 2024/2025 Harvest Plan was R$66.5 billion, the largest ever operated by the bank. Of this amount, R$14.8 billion was specifically allocated to the National Program for Strengthening Family Farming (Pronaf).

Even in livestock farming, it accounts for 30% of the national herd, which feeds the country’s tables, since 98% of beef exports are concentrated in just 45 large companies. https://ojoioeotrigo.com.br/2023/06/saiba-de-onde-vem-sua-comida/ 

Hijacked narrative

If AgriZone was the diplomatic showcase of Brazil’s official image, the Sociobiodiversity Restaurant in the Blue Zone was living proof that it is possible to feed crowds with clean, fair food made by small producers.

Coordinated by Central do Cerrado in partnership with Rede Bragantina, the restaurant served products from family farms and traditional communities, with at least 80% of the ingredients being agroecological. Its success was so great that it needed to reserve specific times just to serve those working inside the COP warehouses. The operation served more than 100 tons of protein from Brazilian family farms, proving that scale is not exclusive to agribusiness.

But it wasn’t just about logistics. It was pure politics: coordination between socio-biodiversity agents who used food as an example of climate policy. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRAtZjiCaxG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ== 

Banquet-rally: food as protest and as the future

At the People’s Summit, the “Banquet-rally” became the great symbol of food sovereignty. Collective kitchens and produce from the land fed hundreds of people with ingredients from more than 40 rural enterprises in Pará, mapped by the Regenera Institute. All without pesticides, at a fair price, and with a transparent supply chain.

Divina Lopes, a member of the MST’s national coordination, summarized: “It may seem easy for this food to get here, but for it to arrive, something is needed beforehand: land, people, and organized communities.” In 90% of Brazilian municipalities with up to 20,000 inhabitants, family farming is the basis of the local economy, according to data from the National Confederation of Rural Workers (Contag) and the 2017 Agricultural Census.

That is the central point. Family farming produces, feeds, and supplies — but it does so under unequal conditions, constant risk, and without fair access to land, credit, and technical assistance.

‘The climate has an owner’

Land concentration is a historical problem and exacerbates CO2 emissions by promoting large-scale agricultural practices such as monoculture and extensive livestock farming. Agriculture and livestock, including deforestation, accounts for two-thirds of Brazil’s emissions, according to the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals Estimation System (SEEG), Brazil’s main independent platform for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.oc.eco.br/emissoes-do-brasil-tem-a-maior-queda-em-16-anos/#:~:text=Como%20nas%20edi%C3%A7%C3%B5es%20anteriores%20do,ter%C3%A7os%20das%20emiss%C3%B5es%20do%20Brasil.&text=toneladas%20brutas%20de%20CO2%20equivalente,mundial%20de%206%2C4%20toneladas ).

In the view of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), the climate crisis is a direct result of the capitalist production model, which prioritizes profit over life and the sustainability of territories. For Divina Lopes, a national leader of the movement, confronting the environmental emergency requires rethinking how to produce food and how to relate to Brazilian biomes.

According to her, the advance of agribusiness, deforestation, and the expansion of the agricultural frontier have particularly affected the Amazon and the Cerrado, biomes that suffer the most intense impacts of climate change. “The dominant logic treats territories as lifeless and uninhabited spaces, destined only to increase the profits of a few,” she stated. For the MST, this model does not generate social, economic, or environmental sustainability, and ignores the populations that live and survive in these regions.

Divina Lopes emphasizes that, in opposition to this model, the movement advocates for popular agrarian reform as a concrete solution: access to land, public incentives, appropriate technologies, and policies that allow communities to produce healthy food without environmental degradation. According to her, agroecology is already present in the experiences of the MST and allied movements in Brazil and abroad, many of them articulated in networks such as Via Campesina.

The leader emphasizes that this agenda also depends on confronting land concentration. Today, around 100,000 families linked to the MST are waiting for access to land — many are camped out, even along highways. “Brazil has enough land to settle all these families, especially areas involved in environmental crimes, forced labor, or land tenure irregularities,” she said.

Despite acknowledging progress in dialogue with the federal government, she states that public policies aimed at family farming and agrarian reform still lack the necessary strength and priority to transform the current scenario. “It’s a dispute within the government itself, because land has become a strategic financial asset contested by national and international capital,” she said.

Lopes emphasizes that the struggle for land and territory is not exclusive to the MST. Indigenous movements, quilombola communities, urban organizations, and collectives working in defense of water, minerals, and food sovereignty share common agendas — and unity among them has been growing. The People’s Summit during COP30 exemplifies this articulation.

Regarding mechanisms like the carbon credit market, the leader is critical. For her, the current model merely “financializes nature” and keeps control of profits in the hands of large corporations. However, she argues that communities that preserve the forest need investment, incentives, and technology to continue protecting their territories.

Lopes concludes that overcoming the climate crisis is not just a technical task, but a political one. “It is necessary to win hearts and minds and show that another model of production and country is possible. We have the conditions to guarantee food sovereignty with diversity, respect for biomes, and social justice. But this requires priority, organization, and struggle.”

This report was produced by O Varadouro, through the Collaborative Socio-environmental Coverage of COP 30. Read the original report at https://ovaradouro.com.br/comida-que-alimenta-e-que-tem-rosto-memoria-e-territorio-historias-de-quem-sustenta-o-brasil/?utm_source=Comunidade+Varadouro&utm_medium=WhatsApp&utm_id=Varadouro+em+rede