Presidential Candidate says Brazil Can Do More

James Thompson, Cropspotters Editor

Brazil elects a new president in October of this year.  From a foreigner’s perspective, the choice that faces voters this year, between the top two candidates, may be one of degree rather than of kind. President Lula—who cannot run for a third term—whose party had formed an alliance with the Communist Party, and who had, in the past, declared that Brazil shouldn’t pay the International Monetary Fund back, has hewn closely to the economic and political policies of his “neo-liberal” predecessor.

To be sure, Mr. Lula has made some changes to the inflation-killing tight-money policies of the Social Democrat he replaced. Changes that have included more money for social efforts, higher minimum wages and things like a Zero Hunger program. But he has not nationalized any businesses, dismantled private ownership of property, or, for that matter, skipped repayments to world financial institutions. On the contrary, his continuation of conservative fiscal policy has lead to better country risk rating.

So this year’s race, in our opinion, is not about taking a radical new direction. Most Brazilians, if asked by a pollster, would likely say that the country is basically “on the right track.” It’s a question of whether the president’s hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff and her Worker’s Party should continue current policy—or whether Governor Serra and his Social Democrats should take it from here.

It may boil down to whether you give President Lula credit for Brazil’s economic success—or just credit for not screwing a good thing up.

It seems likely that most subsistence farmers on small plots will likely vote for Minister  Rousseff and her leftist Worker’s Party, while most farmers with tractors will opt for Governor Serra as president. On the other hand, this is Brazil, and you just never can tell. Eight years ago, the world’s biggest individual soybean farmer, Blairo Maggi, endorsed Mr. Lula for president. And congressman Aldo Rebelo, of the Communist Party, is re-writing the forest code so as to give states more flexibility on the minimum amount of obligatory environmental setaside land on farms—to the accolades of large numbers of medium and large farmers.

So there’s no telling what is likely to happen next.

That said, the Serra campaign cites a few key points among Gov. Serra’s agricultural program.  Serra told an ag audience, “I guarantee you that, in four years, we will have crop insurance and minimum price (programs) in Brazil, that work.”  Serra is in favor of:

• Generic ag chem: Make it public policy to develop Brazilian biotech, to free farmers from being captive to foreign technology
• Consider treating all agriculture the same: Currently there are two ag ministries in Brazil. One for subsistence farmers and one for all other farmers. Serra has called that “inefficient.”
• More aggressive trade policy for ag products such as Brazilian beef.
• Lower interest rates for agriculture

Below are excerpts from a recent speech, entitled Brazil Can Do More, by Governor Serra:

“Government should serve the people, and not the parties and corporations that don’t represent the public-- a government that is always looking to unite the nation. From me, nobody should expect (to be able) to stimulate disputes of rich versus poor, or poor versus rich. I want everybody, side by side, in the solidarity necessary for building a country that can truly belong to all…

And protection of the environment is not incompatible with the extraordinary dynamism of our agriculture, which has been the goose that lays the golden eggs of development of this country, producing food for our people, saving our external accounts, contributing toward holding down inflation and, what’s more, generating energy! I am convinced of this, and we will prove the correctness of this conviction, in practice, in the government. Do you know why? Because we know how to do it, and because Brazil can do more! …

Brazil is becoming ever stronger. Its voice is heard with respect and attention. Let’s use this force to stand for the self-determination of the people and human rights, unwaveringly. I was persecuted in two coups d’etat, and I was exiled twice at the same time—from Brazil and from Chile. I am a survivor of the Santiago (Chile) National Stadium, where many people died. For some reason, God allowed me to get out of there alive. To me, human rights are not negotiable. We don’t cultivate illusions: democracies do not have people incarcerated by force for thinking differently than those in power. Democracies don’t have laborers dying in hunger strikes when they disagree with the regime.”