Brazilian Agribusiness Directly Linked to Land Conflicts and Human Rights Abuses 

02-12-2021

Sina Heckenberger

Environment and Human Rights Researcher,

Global Human Rights Defence.

A Global Witness investigation involving the Capão do Modesto community in Bahia state, Brazil, has exposed how industrial agriculture businesses violate human rights. Insufficient legal protection and patchy regulations allow for the criminalization and intimidation of local communities and the increasingly occurring phenomenon of green land grabs.

Also known as the “Soy Frontier,” the western border of Brazil’s Bahia state is heavily commercialized for cash crops. It was Brazil’s fastest growing area for industrial agriculture between 1990 and 2020. At the same time, the region is home to traditional fecho de pasto communities, such as the Capão do Modesto. These communities use their land mainly for raising cattle and collecting wild fruits and plants - sustainable practices which developed over many generations. Fecho de pasto communities are formally recognized under Bahian law, which mandates the preservation of their traditional way of life. Nevertheless, this status does not grant them land titles.

Land grabs are widespread in Western Bahia. To comply with environmental legislation and continue their agricultural operations, agribusinesses acquire land as legal reserves which has led to the proliferation of so-called “green land grabs”. These are to be conserved in order to offset agricultural practices of the companies elsewhere. Bahia state’s patchy land tenure regulations fail to protect ancestral land owners like the fecho de pasto communities, who are increasingly expropriated from their land. As a result, “ancestral territories have been co-opted (...) to bestow legal and environmental legitimacy to the harmful operations of agribusiness” (Global Witness, 2021).

Under the guise of “conservation” agricultural corporations use litigation to evict the Capão do Modesto from their ancestral land, accusing them of being  “invaders” and “destroying the native vegetation”. Furthermore, local communities report intimidation, threats and harassment by the producers. Green land grabs directly contribute to the worsening of land conflict and destroy the local community’s sustainable farming tradition and means of subsistence. “Traditional communities in Brazil need recognised land titles to allow them to live in peace – land protectors need protecting” (Global Witness, 2021). 

Sources and further reading:

Global Witness. (2021). Seeds of conflict - How global commodity traders contribute to human rights abuses in Brazil’s soy sector. 

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/global-commodity-traders-are-fuelling-land-conflicts-in-brazils-cerrado/