Brazil trying to legalize Amazon landholdings

The Brazilian government is beginning a new push to document who owns private land in the Amazon, a top official said Thursday.

Less than 4 percent of private land in the vast Amazon region is deeded, a situtation that stokes violent conflicts between competing interests, said Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Brazil's strategic affairs minister.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the region in the past two decades during fights over land amid rapid economic development.

"No one knows who owns what, and that is the source of economic disintegration and violent confrontation at the grassroots," Unger told The Associated Press. "We must settle this problem if we are going to move forward on other issues."

The first thing the government wants to do, Unger said, is streamline the process by which land is deeded in the Amazon in a manner that protects the interests of small and medium-sized farmers as much as the large operations.

Under the plan, farms that are less than 100 hectares (250 acres) can be deeded at no cost. Farms larger than that will have to pay to receive land titles, with the price rising along with the size of the farm.

Farms larger than 2,500 hectares will only be titled with the approval of congress, Unger said, in hopes that will help end a system that has resulted in wealthy farmers acquiring enormous swaths of land by forcing out smaller operations, often through violence.

"For the first time in our history we will have a form of social and economic organization that is powerfully slanted to the small and medium-sized owners and farmers, not to the big guys, who will be the losers," Unger said.

Environmentalists contend that the plan essentially allows those who have illegally occupied land _ whether small or large plots _ to apply for a title. And large landowners may simply divide their farms into small parcels and put the titles in the names of family members or close associates.

Former Environment Minister Marina Silva said the plan "legalizes the usurpation of land" in the Amazon.

But Unger countered that the plan will provide crucial legal guarantees for vulnerable smaller farmers.