👨‍🌾 Lula’s lackluster land reform

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Lula tries to reaffirm relations with landless workers, without alienating Big Agro

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva first took office in 2003, Brazil’s financial sector braced for sweeping state intervention. Among the most sensitive concerns at the time was land reform, a historically explosive issue in a country marked by deep-rooted inequality in land ownership.

But over his first eight years in power (2003-2010), Lula governed as a pragmatic center-left leader. His administration expanded social inclusion programs while offering reassurances and many concessions to the country’s economic elites.

Now back in the presidency for his third term, Lula has leaned further into political compromise, constrained by a polarized electorate, a broad and ideologically diverse governing coalition, and a Congress dominated by the agribusiness caucus.

To the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement, or MST — a longtime ally and the country’s main organization of landless workers — Lula’s signature conciliatory style now reeks of paralysis. 

João Pedro Stédile, one of the group’s national leaders, has called the federal government’s handling of land reform in its first two years “shameful.” Other members have gone so far as to demand the ousting of Agrarian Development Minister Paulo Teixeira.

Brazil’s 1988 Constitution enshrines the right to land reform by allowing the federal government to expropriate underused rural land for redistribution, with compensation paid in agrarian debt bonds. Yet more than three decades later, progress has stalled. Today, more than 145,000 families await settlement — 100,000 of them are affiliated with the MST. 

At least 65,000 have been waiting for more than 15 years.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s rural poor face severe threats from land grabbing and violence at the hands of rural militias, often linked to large-scale farmers and, at times, staffed by off-duty police officers.

In 2024, partial data published by the Catholic Church–backed Pastoral Land Commission showed that there was a small reduction in that number of land conflicts (872) compared to the same period in 2023 (938). Of this total, the majority of incidents consisted of violence against landless people (824), while 48 were classified as "resistance actions (occupations, re-occupations and encampments)." The MST claims its land occupations are limited to unproductive or illegally held land, including properties linked to environmental crimes.

A turn in 2025?

Facing slipping approval ratings and mounting food prices, Lula seeks to galvanize his existing support and pander to his traditional constituencies. That also means repairing ties with the MST, which remains the largest producer of organic rice in Latin America, among other crops. 

“I never forget who my friends are,” the president said recently while signing a package of new decrees. “It is for you that I have to govern in this country.”

The announcement came on the eve of Red April — the annual period when the MST steps up its land occupations in memory of the 1996 Eldorado dos Carajás massacre, in which police killed 19 landless protesters in the northern state of Pará.

In a symbolic gesture, Lula visited a landless encampment for the first time in his current term. There, he announced the expropriation of seven farms — totaling 13,000 hectares — across five states, and pledged BRL 1.1 billion (about USD 193 million) to the government’s Food Acquisition Program, which buys produce from agrarian reform families.

Expropriation is only the first step in establishing agrarian settlements, but it grants immediate access to technical support and rural credit for families in encampments. In March, the federal government also revised its 2025 budget to allocate an extra BRL 1.05 billion to the Agrarian Development Ministry. At least BRL 750 million are earmarked for programs directly involving the MST, such as food procurement and the Land and Agrarian Reform Fund.

The site chosen for the decree signing carried particular weight. It was the same location where, in 2020, police officers under Governor Romeu Zema of Minas Gerais carried out a violent eviction operation during the Covid pandemic, destroying a school built by landless workers. The presidential delegation was welcomed at the rebuilt school.

Still, Lula’s tone has been more restrained than in earlier years. He refrained from wearing the MST’s signature red cap (after turning it into a fashionable left-wing accessory in 2022) and did not mention that one of the expropriated farms was the site of a 2017 massacre that left 10 people dead. A witness in that case was murdered in 2021.

A new partnership between the Finance and Agrarian Development ministries has set a cap of BRL 700 million a year for converting the assets of large tax debtors into land for redistribution.

But the measures have not fully pleased either side. Agribusiness-aligned lawmakers have dismissed them as political theater, while MST leaders argue that they fall far short of what is needed.

The Lula administration says it settled 26,000 families in 2023 and 2024 through conventional and environmentally tailored programs. It now pledges to include 326,000 families in all forms of agrarian reform by the end of its term in 2026.

Other stories we’re following

⛏️ Brazil’s Supreme Court is set to end the legal presumption of “good faith” for gold buyers, paving the way for them to be held liable for purchasing illegally mined metal. The ruling, which builds on a provisional decision from April 2023, targets a legal loophole that allowed even major retailers to claim ignorance about the origin of their gold — effectively enabling the laundering of metal extracted from protected areas.

🤑 Brazil’s top judicial oversight body has ruled that judges can receive up to BRL 46,300 (about USD 8,000) per month in extra payments — on top of their salaries, which already reach that ceiling. The decision fuels criticism of the judiciary’s pay structure, which allows for “super salaries” thanks to a litany of financial perks.

💡 The federal government has launched a platform offering human rights training to the public, with a focus on police forces. Courses will cover topics such as harassment and indigenous cultures.

🩺 The São Paulo Medical Association has launched a complaints channel for doctors who suffer harassment from politicians in the workplace. This year alone, there have been at least 29 cases of this type, involving politicians filming such incidents to gain engagement on social media.