PORTO ALEGRE - About 2,000 protesters on Wednesday invaded a plantation in southern Brazil owned by Aracruz, the world's biggest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp, and caused what the company said was millions of dollars of damage and losses.
The demonstrators, most of them women, said they opposed the mass cultivation of eucalyptus trees near one of Aracruz's four main factories in Brazil. The pulp is used to produce cellulose, the main ingredient of paper.
"We don't want the green desert of the cellulose firms. We want a country that produces food," said Irma Ostroski, coordinator for the Via Campesina peasants' organization which staged the raid on the Barba Negra farm in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state.
Aracruz said the demonstrators destroyed saplings and laboratory equipment.
"They smashed up the heart of the farm," Aracruz's regional orchard director Renato Rostirolla said.
The damage included the loss of 20 per cent of the saplings ready for planting - about one million plants.
"The laboratory was completely destroyed, especially seeds and tests, and broken computers," he said.
The lost tests included 15 years worth of genetic research. Actual damage was about $400,000 but the intangible losses ran to millions of dollars, Aracruz said in a statement.
Agricultural Development Minister Miguel Rossetto condemned the action in a statement from Brasilia. State governor Antonio Hohlfeldt said police had video of the damage and intended to investigate those responsible.
Although Via Campesina publicized the invasion on its Web site, it did not mention any damage. When asked by Reuters, Ostroski said the protesters staged a "symbolic action" of destroying saplings.
"As we were more than 2,000 women, it's impossible to say how far people went," she said.
The demonstrators later marched to Porto Alegre to protest at a United Nations conference on agrarian reform.
Small farmers and environmentalists say they fear a rapid expansion of planting in the area by Aracruz. They say the cellulose plants ruin soil and cause rivers to dry up as well as polluting the environment.
Aracruz is studying expanding production at its cellulose unit in the state.
Via Campesina is an international peasants' organization linked in Brazil to the MST (Landless Peasants Movement), which often stages invasions of large farms. The Aracruz action was timed to coincide with International Women's Day
Story by Sinara Sandri
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
