Government denies aid to family farming

Alexandre Henrique Pires
General Coordinator of the Sabiá Center

President Jair Bolsonaro twice vetoed bills passed in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate that create support for family farmers, indigenous people and quilombolas affected by the pandemic.

Social movements, networks and articulations that work in the countryside, in alliance with the PT’s Agrarian Nucleus in the Chamber, built the Assis Carvalho Law Project that provided for support to family farmers affected by the health crisis and economic crisis. Approved by the National Congress in 2020, the law was vetoed by the president of the republic.

Faced with the presidential veto, the group articulated itself once again, and in 2021 presented another PL, once again approved in the legislative houses, but the Assis de Carvalho II Law was vetoed by the president.. In the legislative vote, only Pernambuco Senator Fernando Bezerra Coelho (MDB), government leader in the Senate, voted against approving the Law.

The law provides for cost credit and investments for food production, technical assistance, food marketing with donations to people in food insecurity in the Emergency PAA, debt renegotiation. A value of BRL 2,500 for farmers and BRL 3,000 for female farmers , to invest in food production, allowing for an improvement in the diet of these families and income generation.

ASA and ANA , articulations of which Centro Sabiá is a part, have built with other movements and parliamentarians sensitive to the situation of abandonment of family farmers throughout Brazil, the overthrow of the president’s vetoes in the National Congress. Several laws that aim to help the poorest people, affected by the pandemic and the economic crisis, were vetoed by the president, in a clear demonstration that the current Brazilian government does not prioritize the poorest population.