By: Vitor Ferrari and Ivan Kubala

Provided for in the 1988 Constitution, Agrarian Reform is a measure that is imposed, and is not merely a matter of the Executive Branch, which is obliged to provide it. For this purpose, INCRA was created. (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform), whose mission, in addition to promoting agrarian reform, is to maintain the national registry of rural properties, information on the subject and manage the public lands of the Union. Based on this information and data, it is possible to trace the practical history of agrarian reform in the country and what the prospects are regarding the issue for the next government.

According to this data, the number of land expropriations for agrarian reform purposes has been decreasing over the course of governments: the first government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was the one that incorporated the most land for agrarian reform, whose numbers added to those of the second government, which was second on that list, total 4.7 million hectares. Next comes the government of Dilma Rousseff, with 3.8 million hectares; followed by that of Michel Temer, with 664 thousand hectares and, finally, that of Jair Bolsonaro, who until 2021 allocated 2.8 thousand hectares to agrarian reform.

The number of land titles granted by government is the opposite: Jair Bolsonaro's government has so far granted 362,000 rural property titles. The number issued by the current government is higher than the 99,000 issued during Lula's two terms in office and the 166,000 issued during Dilma's government, from 2011 to 2016.

Based on the aforementioned data, it is possible to state that the strategy adopted by the current government was aimed at settling families in the countryside on lands belonging to the Union or that were reintegrated into it, while that of previous governments sought to expropriate land based on its social function, also provided for in the 1988 Constitution, and then distribute it.

As for invasions of rural properties, there was a drastic reduction in the numbers over the course of the governments: during the Lula governments, 1,968 land invasions by social movements were recorded, 969 during the Dilma government, 54 during the Michel Temer government and, in the current government, from 2019 to 2021, 14 invasions.

After analyzing this information, it is clear that the current government has used different strategies than those adopted by its predecessors, focusing on granting land titles to families. Since the current government was not reelected and a previous leader will return, since Lula won the election, it is very likely that the current strategy will lose strength and the old methods will return: land expropriations for agrarian reform will tend to increase, as will the strength of social movements, which, according to the figures presented, have weakened since the beginning of Dilma's government.

With the collaboration of Luis Felipe Simão