Land

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Friday March 22, 2013 18:49

by Emilio José Lemos de Lima

emiliojoselemosdelima at gmail dot com

assuming that we had more four million families dreaming of a piece of land ...

The core of our proposal is the idea of adding value to agricultural production by conjugation with that of agro-industrial and industrial production, in order to increase farmers' income, the collection of taxes and return on investment of the national state, "deflating" major brazilian centers of all a well-known and extremely costly problem, from the perspective not only of public finances, but also from an emotional and humanitarian angle.

Southern Brazil

Land

The nations that here we call "successful", developed and internationally prestigious, all of them, without exception, at some point in their histories and in order to create large internal, labor, production and consumption markets, facilitated the access of populations interested, to land for cultivation, by pseudo-competitive (USA) uncharacterized donation processes, whether by way of long-term debt, whether even through agrarian-reform policies.

In Brazil, the recent authoritarian period has left us a very successful example through the Housing Finance System, which can be perfectly adapted to the issue of access to land, taking the land itself as warranty of the operations.

Such a procedure, in conjunction with systematic access to technologies and infrastructure, will promote food abundance to the Brazilian populations and build a new and vigorous agro-industrial activity cycle, intensive in capital and in technology, in Brazil, without prejudice for the Brazilian taxpayer or for the Union, quite unlike ...

That's what I will demonstrate at the document "The coordinated action of the National Bank of Agro-Industry and Food Supply and the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Infrastructure and Technology.", immediately below.

The coordinated action of the National Bank of Agro-Industry and Food Supply and the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Infrastructure and Technology.

Since our primary objectives are to facilitate the access of stakeholders to land and make it productive and profitable quickly and not only environmentally sustainable, but also environmentally reconstructive we need to create a log-term financing mechanism, fully integrated and respectful of the productive dynamics realizable on the funded land and another capable of providing information, technology and infrastructure.

Are extremely varied the prices of acres at Brazil, conditioned by topographic features, soil, water, climate, demand, infrastructure, proximity to major urban centers, etc ...

In a quick first look we've found since acres in the Amazon, for 155 reais each, until acres in Rio Grande do Sul, for R$ 9,000.00, R$ 12,000.00, R$ 14,000.00 and still for R$ 16,000.00.

If we look further, we'll find practically any amounts. The cost is only one, as everyone knows, of the variables included in the equation that represents the viability of any small farm.

It is precisely at the systematization of information related to economic/productive viability of this or that piece of land that begin the tasks of embryonic Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Technology and Infrastructure.

Makes sense, first of all, a farmer and his family install alone, on a property of perhaps 30 acres, lost in the vastness of a uninhabited wilderness? Where are the best lands for agriculture? Where are the best lands for new types of agro-industry? Where the water? The weather? The infrastructure? The best consumer markets? Other farmers with potential project synergy? Where do people need more varied, better and cheaper food?

Someone needs to answer these and many other pertinent questions so that our farmer can confidently take his long-term financing and settle with his family.

Again we will need a technical body of consistent academic background and experience, something like a nucleus of selection, research and development of technology, a body completely independent from the sellers of packaged and industrialized technologies, able to, in cooperation with the university and with the farmers, and counting naturally with the appropriate means and tools, answer these numerous initial questions and many other questions which will come through the process of installation and start-up of new and small rural property.

This technical body will work within the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Infrastructure and Technology and besides answering questions, it will need to have resources to guide agricultural or agro-industrial production and facilitate its arrival to consumer markets, so that our farmers can honor their financial commitments and lead their families and workers through the paths of socio-economic and educational prosperity and progress.

Many and significant will be the technical staff qualifications, especially among them, however, the deep knowledge of botany, biochemistry and biology, the foundations of the new agriculture and agro-industry that is coming, intensive in knowledge, in technology and in capital, based on a thorough understanding of the natural succession of species, of subtle and surprising secrets of life and guided to the reconstruction of fauna and flora, as well as to the production of wealth.

Only the deep knowledge of nature may perpetuate the agricultural activity and agro-industry, ensuring stability and continued prosperity for small farmers.

This will be fast, too, the training profile of the new yeoman.

Just remember that about 3,000 different petrochemical products that today are extracted from oil can also be developed from chemical components of the vegetation.

The puriss plastic for medical-hospital use and the aircraft lubricant that does not freeze at high altitudes, both extracted from the common castor bean, are two small examples of what knowledge can do for us, in terms of expanding horizons.

However, to process, to qualify, to transform or industrialize some of the varied products of family farming can be a first step toward agro-industry and so called Dynamic industry , ie, one that is intensive in capital and technology, and so even, presents the best profitability and the best ratio sales / investment.

Let's consider profit rates and billing / investment ratio of dynamic industry and we'll understand quickly why the aggregation of knowledge and technology is the way.

The National Bank of Agro-Industry and Food Supply, in its turn, after answered all those preliminary questions, will facilitate fiduciary resources to the purchase and installation of the new property, as well as those related to productive projects and agro-industries developed by the farmer in understanding with their peers and with the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Technology and Infrastructure.

In some cases where the amounts to be financed are inaccessible to farmers and their cooperatives or by special recommendation of the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Technology and Infrastructure, the Union may join these and other private shareholders on dynamic agri-industrial projects, able to return investments very quickly, generate significant tax revenues, qualified jobs and dividends, thus serving as best, to the national state and to the Brazilian society.

The Bank will repossess resources increased only of interests compatible with international standards, in 20 or 30 years, after a certain and convenient grace period and not necessarily on a monthly basis but in cycles and periods matched with production cycles and with the marketing project established by that particular property, approved and co-authored by Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Technology and Infrastructure.

I think this sketch of these two required public institutions, that I propose as mixed economy companies, controlled by Brazilian National State, is already sufficiently clear.

I am convinced that Brazilians that expect the implementation of such proposals are many more than those warlike and politicized members of the MST. They are, of course, millions of Brazilians maladapted at the outskirts of our cities, where, reluctantly, due to the inadequate diet / health regimen, burden the budgets of public health; Because of the precariousness of life, push up the indicators of violence and crime; burden the budgets of public safety and of a prison system that, very expensive, graduates and produces masters and Ph.D.s from the university of crime; tighten involuntarily all the social environment and almost don't help with tax collection.

If we could have exactly these numbers, we would be able certainly, through them, to demonstrate the extreme financial viability of the project.

Since we can not, we'll do it drawing some parallels and extracting some reasoning from numbers here outlined and from some records of family farming in Brazil.

Many Brazilians more, however, expect and depend on a creative intervention in agriculture and agro-industry: I refer to the owners of 4,139,369 units of family farming and their families, according to information from the INCRA's database.

We are dealing with a contingent of about 16 million people in Brazil, that occupy an average property of 26 acres and generate a gross production value of R $ 168.00 per hectare. In the south, the average property has 21 acres and rises to GPV of R$ 441.00 per hectare.

These Brazilians are contributing greatly to that our tables are plentiful and healthy, but they are not getting back the deserved sympathy and the hurt ones by this apparent indifference are all of us Brazilians, because we are losing the opportunity to build with these brothers and sisters, those great market of production, labor and consumption that we dream that will improve everyone's life.

The numbers in this database are from the IBGE census 95/96, so much has changed since then, as is the case of the "Solidarity Tractor", "Night Irrigation" and many others government programs, improving access of small properties to new and more powerful technologies, contributing decisively to the increase in Gross Value of Production.

The greatly improved access, in recent years, to public health services and to quality education has also contributed much to the improvement of the indicators of these populations.

Public institutions like IAPAR, EMATER and EMBRAPA have made efforts and achieved significant results in the area, something that I also need to register here as a matter of justice.

The growing role of organizations representing small farmers and also the increasing numbers of public investment for the sector, allow us to envision a scenario every day a little better.

The strong productivity growth of some crops in the period 1995-2008, in Paraná, seem to mirror, to some extent, the effectiveness of the sum of these efforts. It is the case of maize, with 23%, of the beans, with 42%, and rice 84%. A case apart is the 10% decrease in soybean yield.

But the explosive growth of the poultry slaughter of 344%, and pigs of 239%, over the same period, seems to speak of the arrival on the scene of performances similar to those of dynamic industry, intensive in capital and in technology.

This recorded evolution of the value of production, at the properties of family farming, allows us to design for today with conservatism and caution, in the south, a GVP of R$ 761.00 per hectare.

An equivalent production will quietly support the financing obtained from the National Bank of Agro-Industry and Food Supply, by a farmer recently established under the supervision of the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Infrastructure and Technology.

Suppose you had purchased 21 acres for R$ 1,904.00 each, to pay in thirty years. You would have a GVP of R$ 15,981.00, of which you'd earmark 10% annually to honor the contracted financing. After 30 years, you will have paid approximately R $ 40,000.00 of the price of land and about more R$ 8,000.00 in interests.

Made this little exercise, I want to note that the land acquired by our farmer is still, I believe, too expensive for our purposes and our possibilities.

We can not, as already mentioned, think of settling farmers individually, because this hypothesis makes everything much more expensive, difficult and unproductive.

One of the noblest tasks of the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Infrastructure and Technology is precisely to identify good deals to buy land, to facilitate the establishment of large cooperatives of new properties, relying whenever possible on the establishment of thousands of new farmers and their families.

This will not only facilitate the intervention of the state in order to provide essential services such as health, education, sanitation, transportation, etc., as will enable land acquisition at dramatically more affordable prices.

However will be decisive for the future of each of these cooperatives, already to be born featuring an agro-industrial project that complements and streamline it.

The closer the standards of this agro-industrial project of the so called dynamic industry, the better for the owners of the cooperative and to the Union.

The owners because the GVP they shall obtain will be much more significant and the Union because it will very soon repossess through the taxes the lent resources, in addition to achieving the satisfaction of contemplating the quality of life of thousands of Brazilian citizens established in the cooperative.

It is necessary, therefore, that the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Infrastructure and Technology make the best in the construction of each of these cooperatives, and the leaders of all owners must participate of everything, informing of everything the totality of the established people.

More than that: it is crucial that the Union is the majority shareholder and controller of each of these agro-industrial projects, lending them stability and ability and giving them credibility in the eyes of the farmers. Other sectors of the private sector can and should participate in these projects, as shareholders, however, it is essential to integrate in this status also the new owners of the cooperative, in order to introduce tension in the administration of agro-industrial initiative, which will deviate them from the condition of mere suppliers always subject to very known manipulations and plunder.

At this point the friend reader has already realized that it must and can also be done by cooperatives of existing family farms. Each of these should also receive the transformative attention of the new Company and incorporate an agro-industrial project that streamline production and increase the income earned.

From the perspective of the Union, the systematic introduction of this agro-industrial factor turns projects quickly viable from an angle strictly of bookkeeping that always ends up weighing a lot.

From the point of view of farmers is the guarantee to quickly integrate those big labor, production and consumption mentioned markets, leaving behind the uncertainty, instability, poverty and misinformation.

It lacks mention the imperative need for the projects swiftly implant continuing education and distance learning, for farmers and their families, in order to enable them more and more in those branches of knowledge mentioned above and others that are considered relevant and priority.

An exercise in financial demonstrations can still be made, though I begin to consider it less important now and I explain why: the dynamics proposed tends to be so agile in the recovery of funds invested, that rather than delve into mega and giga calculations involving millions of Brazilians and many billions of dollars, we must address the previewing of the physical, logistical and operational bottlenecks that lurk along the way, which are well known to the public administrators.

To the most curious readers I let the suggestion of doing exercises having the performance designed for EBVE S / A (as a dynamic industry that it is) as the upper limit and the GVP of small Brazilian properties as the lower limit. (More at industriaeagricultura.blogspot.com , in portuguese only, by now).

Imagine dear reader one of these scroll bars of modern computer programs, with ends at the indicated limits.

As you slide the cursor on the screen of your machine, you cause the performance numbers, profitability, return, etc ... involute and evolve under your eyes, in the taken direction.

The better the agro-industrial project proposed by the Brazilian Company of Agro-Industrial Infrastructure and Technology to owners of a particular cooperative, your results will look more like the EBVE S / A results.

The limit of this exercise is the reality.

On the outskirts of the big cities and in the countryside, assuming that we had more four million families dreaming of a piece of land ...

If we treat to finance to each of these families a property of 25 hectares, we'll need, in this case, a hundred million hectares.

These hundred million hectares represent 11% of the national territory, and improving the rate of occupation of uninhabited and semi-populated expanses within our territory, constitutes an important step toward a safer and more defendable Brazil.

At hundred and fifty reais a hectare, we would be talking about an inflow of 15 billion reais in the Brazilian lands market.

At 500 reais, of 50 billion reais.

At 1000 reais, of 100 billion.

At 2000 reais, of 200 billion reais.

As we see, the careful management of hectare price occupies a prominent position in the future of this public enterprise.

You've already seen the gross value of production of small farms in Brazil. The Union would take 30 years to recover the amounts borrowed by farmers in the installation phase, this period certainly very alleviated by the taxes generated by agricultural activities.

From our perspective, these four million families finaly working in their own land, still bringing food overabundance to our tables and relieving the Brazilian state of emergency service to poor populations when poorly-installed on the outskirts of our cities, fully justifies the application of these sums, perfectly compatible with the tax revenues of the Union, especially if we put an end to the unexplained and inexplicable, unleashed bloodletting, interest payment.

However, if we associate these numbers, to those concerning to the association of small farmers to the national state and the private sector in agro-industrial projects, we'll achieve results even more exciting, as we will demonstrate shortly, by two or three exercises.

To start, nothing modest but quite conservative and realistic, imagine that a small part of this great mass of resources is aimed at structuring of a modern agricultural machinery industry, likened to the shape of EBVE S / A, as you've seen and can now see in more detail in the attached document. (industriaeagricultura.blogspot.com only in portuguese, by now)

The installation and operation of an industrial enterprise like this will compromise an amount between 2.5 and 5 billion dollars, of which only the portion to be paid up by the small farmers will come in small percentage from the funds they borrowed. Something between 0.75 and 1.5 billion reais, a sum easily subtratecd of large land negotiations like these mentioned here.

Private enterprise, including international ones, or others, will pay up the missing sum, after we subtract of total investments, the value contributed by all the farmers and the necessary for the Union to be the majority shareholder and controller of the venture.

Who better than the farmers themselves may contribute to the drawing and the production of agricultural machinery in Brazil, the most perfectly adapted to our needs and characteristics?

However, the profitability and the taxes generated by such a venture, as the friend reader may find in "Financial Overview of EBVE S / A" dramatically will reduce the time needed for recovery of funds loaned to farmers by financial institutions of the Union, and substantially improve incomes and lives of millions of Brazilian families.

As we saw in the Statistical Yearbook of ANFAVEA, an industry of this type, called "dynamic" because it is intensive in capital and technology, has fleshy percentage of profitability (37% in case of EBVE S / A), returns the investments to shareholders fairly quickly (28 months), works in a relationship of reinvestment / invoicing of 1 to 34, generating taxes of around 28% and achieves a productivity of about $ 600,000 per employee / year.

For the reader has a more exact idea: the same statistical yearbook shows a billing of about eight billion dollars in 2008, of the industry of farm machinery installed in Brazil.

The core of our proposal is the idea of adding value to agricultural production by conjugation with that of agro-industrial and industrial production, in order to increase farmers' income, the collection of taxes and return on investment of the national state, "deflating" major brazilian centers of all a well-known and extremely costly problem, from the perspective not only of public finances, but also from an emotional and humanitarian angle.

Do more, I continue, is at the heart of our proposal, putting under increasing national and citizen control all the vast and complex productive chains of agriculture and agro-industry of the XXI century, with invaluable impact on what we call productive intelligence per capita.

Dilma Rousseff studies the case under the new Brazilian industrial policy.

I think that at this point, are already well clear means, intentions and ideas. Now we must exercise with more human, software and hardware resources, until nausea, the multitude of possible combinations, with respect to the possible costs of hectare and likely agro-industrial enterprises, with their variables and well-known performances and results, in order to reach the best utilizations of each real of Brazilian people, and what is assimilable by the tax revenues and by national political situation.

It is essential however we take in the utmost consideration the environmental variable, so as not to contribute further to imitate the developed countries, to the permanent and irreparable collapse of the planet.

So it is important that we observe the examples of other peoples and other civilizations, appropriating uninhibitedly their heritage of knowledge and experience, allowing us, however, to the task of leading the deepening of the studies and of knowledge about nature, biology, of botany and zoology, confident that will only be possible to extract wealth and prosperity of nature, without demolishing it, if we know deeply the substances, processes and rhythms of his permanent and dynamic self-construction and development.