Radio Mundo Real

The expansion of the agribusiness model and the economic openness to large transnational capitals has intensified gender violence and discrimination suffered by rural women in Brazil.

This is what activist Arlene Boa said in an interview with Real World Radio. Boa is a member of the Movement of Peasant Women from Espirito Santo State, to the South-East of the country.

The impacts caused by the expansion of eucalyptus and sugarcane monocultures on family agriculture have a negative effect on the daily lives of women, since they are the ones in charge of managing water and food, which are scarce due to the advance of this model.

Women also experience in an extremely traumatic way the exodus from the rural area to the impoverished areas of the city, something that goes hand in hand with the expansion of agribusiness.

Aracruz Celulosa is the world´s largest producer and has been operating in Espirito Santo for forty years, causing conflicts generated by eucalyptus plantations, which in this case have displaced Tupinikim and Guarani indigenous peoples.

A few days ago, the Pastoral Commission for Land from Brazil published a study which shows that cane and eucalyptus plantations account for the greatest amount of slave work in 2008.