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Rural poverty in Brazil Although Brazil is an important industrial power with the strongest economy in the Latin American region, poverty is still widespread in the country. According to some estimates, 50 per cent of the population is poor (or living on slightly less than US$2 per person per day). Brazil is second only to South Africa in the world ranking of income inequality. The incidence of rural poverty is particularly high in Brazil. Approximately 21 per cent of the total population lives in rural areas, and the country has the largest rural poor population in the western hemisphere. Almost 80 per cent of rural Brazilians, about 30 million people, live in conditions of poverty. Their communities subsist in difficult conditions and degraded environments. In many ways they are more disadvantaged than poor people who live in urban areas. Education and health facilities are more readily available to urban than to rural populations, and water supply and sewage systems are generally inadequate in rural areas. With very limited access to technology and poor infrastructure, poor communities struggle to supplement farming incomes through salaried labour and small-scale enterprises such as handicrafts. Who are Brazil's rural poor people? The poorest and most vulnerable groups among Brazil's rural poor people are women, young people and ethnic minorities such as Afro-descendants. Households headed by women account for 27 per cent of the rural poor. When their husbands migrate to other parts of the country in search of seasonal work, women are left with responsibility for running the family farm as well as the household. The many forms of discrimination against women often aggravate poverty in these households. In addition to farming, women’s daily household chores often include the critical need to fetch water. Child labour is still common among poor households in Brazil. In the poverty zones, especially the North-East, almost 40 per cent of all children between the ages of 10 and 14 work to supplement family incomes. Where are Brazil's rural poor people? The North-East region of Brazil is the poorest and least developed part of the country. The region contains the single largest concentration of rural poverty in Latin America. Landless and smallholder farmers in the semi-arid zone are critically affected by rural poverty. In this region, adverse climatic conditions and limited access to public services have led to the migration of large numbers of people to urban areas, mainly to big cities in south-eastern Brazil. Why are Brazil's rural people poor? One of the main causes of poverty in Brazil is the extreme inequality of land tenure, especially in the North-East and in the country’s central regions. Smallholder farms far outnumber large plantations. The majority of the 4 million farms in Brazil are very small, and most are dedicated to subsistence production. Huge numbers of smallholder farmers eke out a livelihood by working as day labourers in agriculture. In recent decades farm mechanization, technological change and diversification in production have contributed to the loss of rural employment and have led to migration. Lack of access to formal education and skills training is another major cause of rural poverty. Rural poor people have limited access to basic and social infrastructure, and to appropriate technologies and markets, and as a result they have no opportunity to capitalize on farm production or other income-generating enterprises. Poverty is also closely related to difficult climatic conditions and a limited natural resource base. People who live in semi-arid regions with poor soils are the poorest in the country. Source: IFAD |
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