Over the past decade, agribusiness has expanded across Brazil, using its power to promote and impose its will on the food system. With this industry’s powerful influence over Brazil’s politics, governments have failed to enact policies — or eliminated existing ones — that could regulate the industry and protect peasants and the environment. Among the most harmful practices, and the greatest points of struggle between local farmers and agribusiness billionaires, is the question of farming “inputs”: seeds, industrial agrochemicals, and patent laws over genetic “ownership.”

The Movimento Camponês Popular (Popular Peasant Movement, MCP) works with small-scale farmers and peasants in Brazil to spread agroecological farming practices that protect the planet, sustain communities, and defend biodiversity. Peasants in MCP are also resisting aggressive agribusiness land grabs, especially from large-scale industrial agrofuel plantations. Across several of Brazil’s states, and nationwide, MCP models and advocates for diversified crop production, food sovereignty and peasant power.

Since 2008, MCP has worked with peasant families to save, multiply, distribute and market Creole (or heirloom) seeds as a way to defend the peasants’ autonomy and preserve biodiversity. Grassroots International provides resources to MCP so they can expand this work through trainings, staff, and national meetings.