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 How the global agricultural crisis will impact agriculture should be the theme of a meeting between heads of cooperatives and Brazil's minister of Planning, Paulo Bernardo, and the president of the Brazilian Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, to take place this Wednesday, December 17, in Brazilian capital Brasília.
To cancel or minimize the losses that the crisis is already causing to the entire productive chain of Brazilian agribusiness, cooperatives defend the creation of mechanisms that guarantee the trade of the crop and allocation of funds for the financing of turning capital and correction of minimum prices.
The turning of Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) funds to agricultural cooperatives and rural credit should also be defended by the managers of cooperatives. Changes in the official rural credit policy should also be evaluated.
This change has already received the green light of the government, which has a group of specialists studying a new credit policy for the Brazilian agricultural sector.
This information was disclosed December 16 by the minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, Reinhold Stephanes, who participated in the public audience of the Economic Affairs Committee, of the Federal Senate.
According to Stephanes, the current model is overdone and, to guarantee the future of agricultural production, it is necessary to restructure credit and price policies as well as rural insurance.
All sectors connected to agribusiness are facing credit problems, said the president of the Higher Agribusiness Council of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), Roberto Rodrigues, to Agência Brasil.
In case of credit, Rodrigues pointed at greater difficulties and lack of Advances on Exchange Contracts (ACCs) and the fact that funds, although announced, do not reach producers. When they arrive, they are very expensive, pointed out Rodrigues, who was minister of Agriculture in the first term in office of Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Foot on the Brake
Cooperatives based in the state of Paraná should end the year with record-high revenues of 20 billion reais (US$ 8.4 billion). Nevertheless, due to the effects of the global crisis, as a preventive measure, they should reduce investment in new projects by 30% in 2009.
This year, investment totaled 1.2 billion reais (US$ 506 million). According to the Union and Organization of Cooperatives of the State of Paraná (Ocepar), the cooperatives employ 800,000 people, answer to 18% of the state's GDP and to 55% of the local agribusiness economy.
From January to October, Brazil exported 696,000 tons of fruit, generating revenues of US$ 571 million. The result shows growth of 13% over the same period of last year. Figures supplied by the Brazilian Fruit Institute (Ibraf) show that, in the last eight years, exports have grown by an average of 12.25% a year.
Fruit farming, which grows at 4.6% a year, is the economic activity that generates the highest number of direct jobs: 5.6 million, answering to 36% of the Brazilian agribusiness workforce. In 2009, fruit production in Brazil should reach 42 million tons.
Human Development
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is preparing a Human Development Report in order to consolidate opinion polls and socio-economic data on youths from the Mercosur. The survey, which should be launched on April 2009, is going to bring together information such as average level of education, trouble entering the formal labor market and violence.
The report is going to include cross-referenced data on violence, health, education, culture and work in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. Furthermore, it is going to feature an opinion poll among youths from Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Asuncion about future expectations, obstacles to social inclusion and vulnerability to violence.
Radio UN, of the United Nations, has informed that the government of Brazil should make a US$ 300,000 contribution to the supplementary budget of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and, with this, should become the first donor in the southern hemisphere to make this kind of investment.
The Brazilian contribution should be used to support programs in Latin America and the Caribbean with the objective of promotion of the main principles and fundamental rights of labor.
Anba
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
You finally find what YOU HAVE HARSHLY CRITICZED....FOR YEARS AND YEARS......IS GOOD !!!!!!!
That is exactly what I have been telling you HERE since 2003 !
Furthermore on your ACTUAL way of subsidies, you ALSO get to the point I underlined for years :
"When they arrive (the subsidized credits), they are very expensive, pointed out Rodrigues,"
OF COURSE....how can anyone explain that when the TJLP rate is at 6,875 % at the BNDES, it ends up at 12-14 % to the farmers ?????
Ohhhhh yesssssssss.....the rate differential created a lot of well paid jobs in the financial intermediaries, but ended at a rate NOT GOOD to the farmers or agrobusiness !!!!
And who was wrong during all these years I pointed out and criticized your WAY OF PROVIDING SUBSIDIES?????
ME---OF COURSE !!!!!
But now that the good intentions are finally here, things are not as easy as you may think.
What are you going to do with the FAT INTERMEDIARIES ???????? I mean the BANKS !
Because your problems dont stop with the government agricultural subsidies.
YOU THE PEOPLE, are also taken for a ride from your banks, when they charge you over 30 % for car loans, over 50 % for Consumers goods loans, and 200 % for overdrafts.
YOU THE PEOPLE are ripped off far more from your banks, than the subsidized farmers !!!!!!
Rather funny that Rodrigues criticizes NOW what he defended while he was the Minisiter of Agriculture !
Fact being HE was one of your W0RST Minister of Agriculture. He openly and publicly lied lied lied in many other occasions while he was Minister. And his lies were for hiding the darker truth.
i can be far more specific if someone wants more memory refreshing !
YOU THE PEOPLE are ripped off time and again, time and again, and of course YOU APPLAUDE those ripping you off !!!!!
You even re-elect them !
As I said a few times, Noooooo one on earth are as masochits as Brazilians are.