It’s Not Just About Us: Food as a Mechanism for Environmental and Social Justice in Mato Grosso, Brazil

Abstract

The Landless Workers Movement (MST) is one of the most important social movements in the world for the implementation of agrarian land reform. Their fight for access to land has been based on the premise that land should serve a “social function.” Since its birth in the 1980s, the MST has settled more than one million people in Brazil on approximately 35 million acres of land (an area about the size of Paraguay). Many of the settlements across the country have demonstrated a commitment to move beyond social justice by combining environmental justice into their discourses and activities, and pinning their struggle with the fight for food sovereignty. This ethnographic research explored the different ways that environmental discourses and activities are being incorporated into the movement by describing the experience of the 12 de Outubro settlement in the state of Mato Grosso. Interviews with members of 12 de Outubro reveal that by implementing alternative agricultural methods like agroecology and agroforestry, they believe they are able to restore and protect the land that they acquire, while working towards food sovereignty. Secondly, they hope to demonstrate that their struggle for access to land is not just for individual benefit, but rather, that by growing healthy food sustainably and by developing a cooperative that benefits the entire community, land is fulfilling the social function that it should. Finally, they believe that their activities have connected them to the larger urban community through the establishment of CANTASOL, a solidarity commercialization system, extending awareness about food, the environment, and social justice into the urban sphere.