A “Command Centre” for Smallholder Sales

Like many who follow international rural politics, I had long heard of the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). Landless people, land occupation, struggle, agrarian reform — these keywords attached to MST were so stark that I had unconsciously filed it under the heading of a land movement “rooted in rural settlements, in continuous struggle.” It was not until October 2025, when I walked into one of their agricultural produce warehouses in Brazil, that this fixed impression in my mind was completely shattered.

The warehouse was not particularly large — just over two thousand square metres — and was still under construction: some sections of the walls had not yet been finished. But the functional zoning was clear and orderly — dry goods piled on one side, fresh fruit and vegetables stored on the other. A staff member showed me an inventory list running to more than a dozen pages, densely packed with three or four hundred items: coffee, chickpeas, grain flour, jam, vegetable relish, spice packs… In that moment it hit me suddenly that MST is far from being solely focused on “fighting for land.” They are also doing something harder and far easier to overlook — scaling up the sale of produce from scattered smallholder farmers.

“Selling ecological farm produce is brutally hard” — that is a simple yet profound conclusion I have drawn from years of deeply immersed research in ecological agriculture at home. But after in-depth conversations with MST’s partners, I found that their sales model is very different from the various decentralised, piecemeal efforts of our counterparts here: MST does not rely on occasional market stalls, nor on hawking products through WeChat Moments. Instead, they have built a complete system encompassing warehousing, order matching, compliance certification, channel development, and logistics delivery, turning the sale of agricultural produce into a cyclical, sustainable operating mechanism. This warehouse before me is precisely a critical node where MST embeds itself in Brazil’s urban food network.

I was eager to understand how they had built this systematised sales model; what I wanted to explore even more was — for those of us who are currently also grappling with “how ecological smallholders can efficiently enter the market” — what transferable lessons this practice from Brazil holds for us.

After the Land Occupation

The Portuguese full name of MST is Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra; in English it is usually rendered as the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement. In Chinese, two translations are in common use — “Landless Workers’ Movement” and “Landless Peasants’ Movement” — the latter being more widely used.

Its emergence is inextricably linked to Brazil’s socio-historical roots: the plantation economy left over from the colonial period produced an extremely uneven pattern of land distribution — 42.5% of Brazil’s land is controlled by less than 1% of the population, a situation that has directly given rise to some 4.5 million landless people. To change this predicament, in 1984, 92 farmer leaders gathered in Cascavel, in the state of Paraná, to formally declare MST’s founding. Their goal was plain and resolute: to advance agrarian reform, to organise the landless, and to enable people to truly take root on the land, to produce, and to live.

Under Brazilian law, land must continuously serve a productive function, otherwise it may be classified as “ownerless land.” MST seized precisely on this provision, developing a phased strategy of struggle: first, they establish camps or settlements on land they deem “idle and failing to realise any social productive value” (often settling and taking root first), then organise production and communal life, and finally enter the protracted legal and administrative process — through litigation, policy advocacy, political negotiation and other means — seeking government recognition of the “productive function” that the land has been given anew. Only then does the possibility of obtaining legal ownership of the land arise. This process is fraught with contest and hardship; bloodshed, armed suppression, and forced evictions occur with some regularity.

Today, MST has been on the road for more than four decades, with its struggles and practices spanning 23 of Brazil’s 26 states, achieving remarkable results: in total, it has helped 450,000 households secure land, spearheaded the establishment of 1,900 farmers’ associations, 185 cooperatives, and 120 agricultural processing workshops.

MST’s wide-reaching influence has led most researchers to focus on its mobilisation methods, organisational form, camp life, and political strategy — all dimensions that are undeniably important. But from the practical perspective of “making do with the daily necessities of life,” there is a more pressing question: once the land has been occupied, how does one sustain a livelihood? Securing the right to use land is not the same as having a sustainable livelihood and a secure life.

For residents of the settlements, the survival challenges are particularly concrete: some plots are unsuitable for growing food, making self-sufficiency difficult to achieve; even where the arable land is worked according to ecological principles — no pesticides, no chemical fertilisers — the dilemma of “quality produce failing to command a premium price” persists. Only by selling agricultural produce at a fair price, by converting food into money, can the household’s day-to-day expenses and operations be sustained.

Within the mainstream food system, smallholders in the settlements are inherently in a disadvantaged position — they lack experience in market sales, and when facing channel operators such as large supermarket chains, their scattered produce simply cannot find a foothold. The core question thus gradually sharpened to this: how to consolidate the dispersed output of smallholders into an organised supply that achieves stable, sustained sales.

A “Command Centre” for Smallholder Sales

Our research site is in Belo Horizonte, in the south-east of Brazil, the capital of Minas Gerais state, with a population of approximately 2.5 million.

The platform that received us is called Concentra. The team comprises four or five staff members, all very young — the oldest is only in their early forties — three of whom had in-depth conversations with us. These three left me with a shared impression: their conviction was absolute; they believed unshakeably that what they were doing was valuable and meaningful. Two of them had lived and worked in a settlement — MST settlements are not merely places to live; they also come equipped with schools, basic medical facilities, and shared public spaces. They grew up in the settlements from childhood, immersed in MST’s values-based education.

MST’s value system is relatively complex, but at its core it revolves around the “four pillars”: struggle for land, struggle for agricultural and land-system reform, struggle for social change, and organisation and education. The collective living environment in the settlements and the systematic education there foster a powerful sense of identification with this value system among young people, while also continuously cultivating a pool of core talent willing to commit to the movement’s organisational work.

One of Concentra’s staff members, after graduating from university, took part in a government-organised rural service programme — much like China’s “volunteer teaching in the west” initiative — before ultimately choosing to return and put down deep roots within the MST network. My local guide Luiza, a teacher at the local university who has been working with MST for many years, remarked with admiration: “These people are incredibly sharp.” Clearly, through decades of sustained movement work, MST has built a robust talent reservoir that continuously attracts outstanding individuals to join.

Concentra plays a dual role as “intermediary and coordination centre”: on the supply side, it works with seven cooperatives in Minas Gerais while also linking in products from other MST cooperatives nationwide; on the demand side, it connects with buyers ranging from government bodies and supermarket chains to restaurants. It receives orders of all kinds, then, based on each cooperative’s resource endowments and production strengths, allocates demand precisely to the most suitable cooperative, acting as a coordinator in between to effectively prevent destructive competition among cooperatives. When necessary, Concentra also makes advance payments for goods, providing financial support for smallholder production.

In addition, warehousing, sorting, logistics and delivery, product-line development, processing coordination, and the pursuit of compliance certification are all overseen by this platform. In essence, it takes on centrally the vast amount of “market-support work” that would otherwise fall on individual smallholders, lowering the barrier to market participation through specialised division of labour.

A staff member told me the story behind a baobab jam. The product originated when a mining company came to them of its own accord — because its mining operations had caused ecological damage to an MST settlement, the company wished to order 1,000 boxes of jam as part of a compensation package. After Concentra organised the members to complete production, the company reported that the taste was excellent, and the team conceived the idea of developing it into a permanent product line. But for agricultural produce to enter market circulation, a series of hurdles must be cleared: meeting food hygiene and safety standards, designing compliant packaging and labelling, and completing various registrations and permits. Fortunately, Concentra has a dedicated legal team, and in the end, even through political-level dialogue and lobbying, it pushed government departments to recognise the product’s compliance pathway, allowing it to officially reach the market.

The staff member was candid: every product’s growth requires a long cycle and must rely on the coordinated effort of legal compliance, policy engagement, production organisation, and sales channels to truly survive. And this capacity — to institutionalise and bring products into regulatory compliance, and to integrate them into broader distribution systems — is precisely the most scarce gap for smallholders. Rather than relying on individual farmers to figure it out on their own, MST has turned it into a collective capability of the entire network.

I also noticed that they are incubating a new own-label brand — Raízes do Campo, whose name roughly means roots of the field or roots of the countryside. Taking one of its coffee products as an example, the packaging clearly shows that it is jointly produced by two cooperatives, covering 604 farming households, and bears Brazil’s official “family farming” (agricultura familiar) certification mark. Notably, this brand deliberately omits the MST logo. The reasoning is practical: in Brazil, MST is a strikingly identifiable left-wing political symbol, widely respected in certain circles, yet for entering mainstream channels — particularly large supermarket chains — that label would actually become an obstacle. So they have built a “neutral brand” to pave the way for embedding their produce in a broader sales network.

To date, Raízes do Campo has successfully entered several small community supermarkets. The staff candidly acknowledged that partnering with large supermarket chains is extremely difficult — the requirements are stringent and prices are heavily squeezed — but they have never stopped trying. Indeed, products from one cooperative have already made it into Walmart. This pragmatic approach impressed me: get the business running first, adjust the strategy flexibly, with everything centred on scaling up and benefiting as many farming households as possible.

Production and Consumption

A Two-Way Linked Ecosystem

When it comes to ecological agriculture, we often harbour a romantic notion: that smallholders naturally favour ecological farming, are keen to cooperate, and willingly engage in public affairs. Reality is the exact opposite — in the initial phase, mobilising farmers to join a cooperative production and sales system is extremely difficult; convincing them to shift to ecological farming meets equally fierce resistance. Outsiders tend to overestimate smallholders’ willingness to participate.

The staff revealed that in a settlement of 100 households, the number that can be stably mobilised in the initial phase is often only around 10 active participants. Their strategy is one of “using a few to draw in the many”: first get a small group to try it and produce a model that shows “real earnings and reliable cash flow.” When other farmers see tangible profits and realise the model genuinely works, participation is gradually expanded. Guiding farmers to transition to ecological agriculture and standardising their products is, moreover, a protracted, step-by-step process.

One of the regrets of this research trip was the inability to visit a settlement to observe the full production process in situ, or to gain a deep understanding of its internal labour-division and profit-sharing mechanisms. However, Concentra made it clear that the majority of product profits are returned to the producers and distributed autonomously within the cooperatives, with the product’s market performance serving directly as the core incentive for farmers to participate in production.

MST’s agricultural produce is sold mainly through three channels, forming a diversified and stable distribution matrix.

The first category is local specialty restaurants. We visited one run by people from northern Minas Gerais; the owner’s family members live in an MST settlement, and she herself had once worked in the settlement’s kitchen. The restaurant specialises in home-style seasonal dishes, with most ingredients coming from her family’s plots or the settlement’s cooperatives.

We dined during the lunch rush, and the restaurant was packed — business was booming. MST staff took the opportunity to bring in produce from other cooperatives for promotion, hoping the restaurant would both use them in its menu and help resell them. The meal we had that day was authentically Brazilian local fare: banana with rice and beans, accompanied by a tomato and vegetable salad, pumpkin, and a dish called Folofa — a stir-fried cassava flour preparation. Every ingredient came from the settlements. Channels of this kind build their connections on emotional and cultural identification; expansion is slow, but the foundation of trust is solid and the partnerships are stable.

The second category is niche shops specialising in organic and ecological foods. One store we visited, located in a relatively “progressive and open-minded” neighbourhood, stocks MST’s coffee, jam, and vegetable relish alongside other organic products, with no dedicated shelf. To get into these shops, a product’s price and quality must be competitive — I compared them on the spot and found that MST products are more competitively priced among comparable organic produce. In addition, the MST network operates approximately 20 directly managed stores nationwide and has also built an online sales platform, further broadening its retail reach.

The most surprising third channel is local government. The staff explained that this warehouse in Belo Horizonte supplies fresh ingredients to community kitchens under the PAA (the government food procurement programme). These kitchens primarily serve urban vulnerable groups such as waste pickers, and can work through roughly one tonne of agricultural produce every 15 days. Another key partner is the PNAE (the National School Feeding Programme), which aims to improve the quality of school meals by encouraging the procurement of local family-farming products and increasing the share of fresh ingredients (Brazil, too, is deeply affected by the proliferation of ultra-processed foods).

The core objectives of these two national programmes align closely with the characteristics of MST’s agricultural produce, forming a stable foundation for cooperation. But this space for collaboration is intimately tied to the political climate: under the Lula government, policy was relatively relaxed, and MST received considerable political recognition and support; during Bolsonaro’s tenure, multiple collaborations between the two were shelved, MST’s room to operate was compressed, and it was even regarded as a “hostile force.” Accordingly, the team voiced their concern frankly: should Brazil’s right-wing forces resurge in the future, their position could once again be thrown into difficulty.

  Can China Copy the Playbook?

The MST agricultural produce network is, in essence, a branch of its broader social movement. The fruits of decades of movement-building have given this network a solid “foundation” — an ample pool of talent, a unified ideological consensus, a mature model of production organisation, awakened consumer awareness, and a measure of political recognition.

This is a tightly interlocking system; without decades of struggle and educational groundwork, MST’s agricultural produce sales network would simply not exist. This body of practical experience carries a distinctly Brazilian character and is difficult to replicate directly. In other words, MST’s agricultural produce network may look like “selling goods,” but it is in fact the external manifestation of the movement’s achievements: the movement builds the infrastructure, and the network converts that infrastructure into tangible sources of livelihood and development.

Concentra’s operational model clearly reflects MST’s open and pragmatic attitude — it does not shy away from cooperating with mainstream systems, nor does it cling to “our own little market.” Order-based production, a multi-brand strategy, and even the seemingly contradictory practice of “omitting the MST logo” all serve the core purpose of accessing broader sales channels, scaling up, and benefiting more farming households. At the present stage, at least, they have not fallen into the trap of “losing control after scaling up and turning around to exploit the workers”; on the contrary, Concentra consistently emphasises that the platform should cede as much of the profit distribution as possible to the production side, safeguarding smallholders’ rights and interests.

Political support plays the role of a “stabiliser” in the mix: the government provides low-rent warehouse leases, government procurement delivers stable orders, and policy programmes open institutional pathways. These supports give the agricultural produce network a firmer operational footing. Under such guarantees, sales expectations are clearer, cash flow is more reliable, farmers’ motivation to participate is stronger, and only then can the entire network achieve healthy expansion. But in turn, this makes the network dependent on the political climate — when the wind shifts, the room for growth may contract accordingly.

MST’s experience cannot simply be transplanted to China. The social environment, political system, and organisational space we face are fundamentally different. Domestically, many ecological smallholders are forced into the role of “universal farmer”: they must master growing techniques as well as sales skills; understand logistics operations as well as laws and regulations; build brands while also running communities and expanding channels. Every step is an uphill struggle. During my fieldwork in rural areas of Guangdong, I witnessed this predicament firsthand — it is not that farmers are not hardworking enough, but that they are structurally forced to operate as lone individuals, lacking collective support.

The core insight from MST’s practice may be this: for smallholders to hold their ground in the market, the key is not to keep pressuring individual farmers to master every “sales skill,” but to organisationally integrate capabilities in sales, compliance, warehousing, processing, logistics, and so on — converting them into collective capability and platform capability — so that fragmented supply becomes supply that can be standardised and scaled for market access.

At the end of the day, the circulation of ecological agricultural produce has never been a purely market issue; it also carries a public dimension. It requires the coordinated effort of policy support, infrastructure, organisational capacity, and consumer awareness. MST’s agricultural produce network, precisely under the convergence of these conditions, builds the “production–distribution–resources–movement” cycle: when products sell, the organisational foundation of settlements grows more solid; when the organisation is more solid, MST’s values and mobilisation capacity also gain the driving force for sustainable development. This may well be the most precious reflection that this Brazilian experience leaves for China’s ecological agriculture practitioners.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs were taken or produced by the author.

Edited by: Tianle

Layout: Xiaoshu

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