Brazil launches rural credit aid

Lula: We will not abandon rural farmers

Poor family farms in Brazil are to receive a significant increase in government credit as part of the new president's drive to combat hunger and poverty.

President Luiz Inacio da Silva, known as Lula, announced the $2bn credit initiative, saying it would help reduce unemployment in the cities by giving families the means to stay in the countryside.

The aid is particularly aimed at the poor north-east of Brazil, where the president himself was born before his family joined the mass migration to the cities of the south in search of work.

The budget for the scheme is an increase of more than $400m from last year.

Almost 1.5 million families are expected to benefit.

Lula warned that ministers would be made to answer if the money was not distributed during the planting season.

Patience

He said the programme would also aim to enable women to receive credit, independently of their husbands and offer credit to young farmers as an incentive for them to stay in the countryside.

During the harvest we will be alongside them - our aim is to help, not hinder

President Lula

"The government is not going to abandon rural producers," he said.

"Next year we will be here again to see if the programme helped improve farming or not.

"Meanwhile these are the objectives. Now is the time to plant the seeds. During the harvest we will be alongside them. Our aim is to help, not hinder."

According to Globo News, he urged the farmers to complain about things if they did not agree with them.

"Don't stop complaining," he said.

"Sometimes it is better to have people who complain than those who don't because people who complain help us understand where we are going wrong."

The president repeated his promise to carry out full agrarian reform, which he describes as "a dream, a wish, a moral, political, and ethical" commitment.

But he also called for patience, especially from the landless organisations such as the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), which in recent months have launched a wave of illegal occupations of farmland to press for land reform.

In response, landlords have been hiring armed guards, resulting in rising levels of violence.

The MST, which supported Lula as leader of the Workers' Party before he came to power, is stepping up its action as the president approaches six months in office.

Over the weekend there were more than 18 land invasions in the state of Pernambuco alone.