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Under the slogan “Women Against the Violence of Agribusiness and Agrotoxins; For Land Reform and Food Sovereignty”, members of the international peasant movement Via Campesina, together with other organisations working for the rights of women and the rural population, demonstrated Tuesday and Wednesday in six Brazilian states.

According to the Brazilian Crop Protection Association (AENDA), which represents producers of farm chemicals, Brazil uses more than one billion litres of agricultural chemicals a year, making it the top consumer country since 2009 of weedkillers and insecticides that have toxic effects on living organisms, including human beings.

Amanda Matheus, a national coordinator for the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), told IPS that the use of agrochemicals that harm the environment is the result of an agricultural production model biased towards agribusiness, or large-scale export-oriented agricultural production.

The model “is driven by an alliance between large landowners and transnational corporations that gain control of the land and invest in monoculture plantations, such as sugarcane and eucalyptus,” she said.

“The system produces primarily for export, while it degrades the environment and land ownership becomes ever more concentrated,” said the MST leader, who was taking part in a protest in front of the National Development Bank (BNDES) in Rio de Janeiro.