New Brazilian president wants to flexibilize land sales to foreigners

According to sources of O Globo newspaper, interim president of Brazil, Michel Temer, is looking to flexibilize the land sales to foreigners in Brazil. During the Lula administration in 2010, the acquisition of large land plots was banned by the government due to the fear that international companies would control the agricultural sector in Brazil.

Still according to O Globo, the interim government can revise the evaluation of the Attorney General that affirmed that the law “assured national sovereignty in a strategic area of the economy and the country’s development”. A source close to Temer said that the standard is “absolutely purposeless”.

In 2010, the Attorneyship issued an evaluation of the law 5,709 of 1971, making difficult the sales of large agricultural land extensions and putting the extinct Ministry of Agrarian Development as a regulator. A process of “Chinese invasion” in Africa was cited – a process which would have taken out the autonomy of those countries on agricultural production.

"Africa is different. Here, we have legislation, banks, agrarian policy, more than century- old tradition in the sector. There are trade regulations that protect us,” a source of the interim government told O Globo.