What strategies do tobacco companies employ to undermine crop diversification and alternative livelihoods for tobacco farming workers and

Introduction

5. What strategies do tobacco companies employ to undermine crop diversification and alternative livelihoods for tobacco farming workers and

growers in Brazil?

Answering these questions using a SWOT approach, looking at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the Diversification Program, helped to verify its feasibility. A Joint National Capacity Assessment on the Implementation of Effective Tobacco Control Policies conducted by WHO in Brazil, in May 2008, verified that there was anecdotal evidence of the impact of the MDA programs on diversification. According to that WHO assessment, it was “impossible to know whether diversification efforts work, and if so, what the best approach is”. The assessment would not recommend investments or ensuring adequate funding, unless the Program proved feasible.

A Territorial Dimension for Planning

Brazil has lost its capacity for planning with the debt crisis and hyperinflation in the 70ʼs and 80ʼs. Only in the 90ʼs did the country reach monetary stability with the Plano Real. However, strong measures for fiscal adjustments took the capacity of investment

20 FCTC/COP/3/11. September 4, 2008. Parragraphs 27 and 32-34.

21 FCTC/COP/3/11. September 4, 2008. Parragraph 33.

22 FCTC/COP/3/11. September 4, 2008. Parragraph 32.

10

from the Brazilian State, heavily damaging economic growth and the return to planning actions.

Currently the scenario has been changing and the country has been able to maintain macroeconomic stability and growth, which opens up the possibilities for public action planning. The “Study on the Territorial Dimension for Planning”

²³

expresses the Brazilian government's effort to provide tools for the debate on the need to regard the territory as the base for public policy design.

The Brazilian State needs public policies that are able to guarantee equal opportunities, basic rights of citizenship and sustainable development, organized in medium-to-long-term plans with stability of budget and financial flux in order to assure the conclusion of actions that were initiated. The debate on efficiency and quality of public spending seeks to insert the territorial dimension on planning, so the territory can emerge as a platform of public policy integration.

The priorities of territorial action planning are oriented to present alternatives to actions that will achieve a territorial re-organization of the country, promoting sustainable development in the different regions and reducing social and regional inequalities. They will allow for dynamic impulses in the different regions of the country in a way that makes it

“possible for a convergence of

per capita levels of income and levels of peopleʼs life

quality”

²⁴

.

The processes for implementing productive diversification and livelihood improvements for the rural population in tobacco growing regions should be oriented by this methodological approach. The set of values, bases, means and directives that orient integrated and sustainable territorial planning help to identify the “strategic vectors for development”. Despite that, this new strategic vision adopted by the federal government is still at a very conceptual level and it needs to be verified how public policies developed by different governmental sectors are, indeed, converging in that direction.

Methods

The research was sponsored by HealthBridge Canada through the program on tobacco and poverty. The Alliance for the Control of Tobacco Use in Brazil (ACTbr) managed the funds used for research development. The project was executed from July 2010 to January 2011 (data collection and data analysis), but during the writing process in the following months, new data and information arose for the report.

Data Collection and Data Analysis

To develop the research primary and secondary data were collected. Fieldwork and in depth interviews conducted with managers of the Ministry for Agrarian Development, Agriculture, Health, Integration, Environmental and Industry Ministry, and with key stakeholders supplied important information on the Diversification Program and its integration with other public policies. Most of the secondary sources were associated with governmental brochures, books and reports on public policies. Information was also

23 Brazil. Study on the Territorial Dimension for Planning. Secretary of Strategic Planning and Investments (SPI), Center for Management of Strategic Studies (CGEE), Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management (MPOG). 2008.

24 Ibid.

11

collected from local associations, civil organizations, networks and social movement documents and reports, in addition to tobacco industry publications, such as annual reports.

The methodology for the in depth interviews included mapping of stakeholders and governmental agents. This was done in order to identify key players in the Program, which allowed for an interest, importance and influence analysis on the results of the Program interventions. Five key stakeholders were identified for the in depth interviews, four from social movements who accessed the Program, and one researcher from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, who worked for the methodological definition of the concept of diversification adopted by the MDA.

The information collected on the Diversification Program includes theoretical bases, objectives, methodology for project selection, specific project information, such as numbers and nature of supported projects, families and municipalities reached by the Program, specific project goals and socio-economic models of productive systems.

The territorial scope of productive activities developed within the projects supported by the Diversification Program were verified through the incidence of different public policies, such as Bolsa Família, Programa para Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC), Programa Nacional para Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF), Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (PAA), Programa de Desenvolvimento Territorial Rural Sustentável (PDTRS), among others. And, a literature review of scientific journals, specialized publications, research reports, governmental documents and reports, academic theses and dissertations was performed.

The data analysis regards small farming public policies as compared to policies targeted to larger agricultural activities, in order to measure the efficiency and commitment of public power and consistency with the objectives and principles of the Diversification Program. Within the governmental strategic planning, it is important to know if the application of public resources in the Program contributes to fragmented efforts and initiatives with small amplitude; or if it contributes to a process of redefining the model which is causing ruptures on socio-environmental, cultural and economic dynamics of traditional small scale agriculture.

²⁵

Information on the purposes of this research was given to the participants and informed consent forms were used for the interviews in order to ensure the protection of their privacy, dignity and integrity.

Study Area

The study focused on tobacco growing diversification initiatives located in Southern Brazil.

25 Jacques Chonchol (1986:340-345) observes that agrarian systems resulted from the conservatory modernization of Latin America agriculture are characterized by the rapid increment on agriculture and cattle exports; great internal market expansion; agricultural commerce development in a large scale and changes on production systems; public policies; increase participation of the private sector on the generation and transferring of technology; transnacionalization of the agricultural sector; and the emergence of new categories of business agriculture.

12

Figure 1: Brazil and Southern Brazil Maps. Source: Google Images.

The key stakeholders identified to the in depth interviews were from the Rio

Pardo Valley Region in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, due to the meaning of this region to

tobacco production in Brazil. There the largest tobacco companies have their industrial

plants and exercise significant influence in the political and public sectors, communities

and tobacco growers.