In contrast to what myopic reactionaries insist, official data and various studies indicate the existence of a fabulous stock of agricultural land, idle and underutilized, in every region of Brazil. These same sources also document a large contingent of people in need of that land. The studies demonstrate an increase in social inequality and in the concentration of ownership of agricultural property. Adopting the standards of José Graziano da Silva and Mauro Eduardo Del Grossi to characterize those in need of land, the Rurban Project (Projeto Rurbano) calculated the relevant needy population. The project used as a base numbers from the National Research for Household Indicators of IBGE (the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). The Rurban Project found that the potential number of land claimants in Brazil was 7,241,000 families in 1998. In 1992, this number was 7,003,000; in 1993, 6,964,000; and in 1995, 7,401,000. The reduction we observed from 1995 to 1998 in the total number of needy families (160,000 fewer in 1998) was not the result of the government attaining its poverty-reduction targets, as it claimed. Rather, this reduction is a consequence of a decrease in the number of families with already insufficient land (470,000 total over the period), indicating that at least 150,000 families abandoned their homes annually during the period. On the other side, the number of families without access to land rose from 4,145,000 to 4,455,000, indicating an absolute increase of 310,000 in the number of landless families. Along with this, the concentration of ownership of Brazilian agricultural real estate is scandalous. Land concentration can be measured by using the Gini index, an indicator that varies from 0 (no concentration, a perfectly even distribution) to 1 (perfect concentration of all land under one owner). Data provided by the Agricultural Census of 1995/96 for the concentration of ownership produces a Gini index of .856 for the total of all agricultural establishments (owners, renters, sharecroppers, lease-holders, and occupants). The lowest concentration occurs in the South (.742) and the highest in the Northeast (.859). Data for the year 1998 provided by INCRA, the Brazilian National Institute of Settlement and Agrarian Reform, reveal that there are 3,183,055 small farms and "agricultural properties" (those rural properties with a total area up to 4 "módulos", a unit of area that varies according to the region's productivity). This represents 88.7% of the number of registered properties with a total area of 92.1 million hectares (only 22.2% of the total registered area in Brazil). In contrast, 104,744 "great properties" (those with more than 15 "módulos"), representing only 2.9% of the number of estates registered, account for 238.3 million hectares (57.3% of the registered real estate). This inequality attains its most extreme level with the 21,000 "megalatifúndios" or "mega-plantations" (those properties with more than 50 "módulos"). They represent only .6% of the total number of registered estates but hold more than 149 million hectares, or around 36% of all the agricultural area in Brazil. According to this government survey, 59,800 of the great rural properties are non-productive, accounting for a total area of 166.3 million hectares. Productive great rural properties, by comparison, number 45,000 with a total area of 72 million hectares. In the North region of Brazil, there are 8,000 large unproductive rural properties with a total area of 57.3 million hectares. In the Northeast region, this idle real estate includes 11,300 properties amounting to 27.5 million hectares. In the Southeast, 12,500 rural estates with a total area of 12.3 million hectares sit idle. In the South region, 8,700 unproductive farms take up 12.3 million hectares. And finally, in the Southeast, the large unproductive rural properties total 19,300 farms occupying an area of 62.9 million hectares. If we consider only the areas declared by their owners as potentially productive and the mean size (in "módulos") of properties in the counties where these large idle properties are, we find that it would be possible to settle an additional 2.6 million families of rural workers. This might all be accomplished using land redistributed following constitutional guidelines for agrarian reform. These would include 817,000 in the Central-West, 611,000 in the North, 498,000 in the Northeast, 401,000 in the Southeast, and 282,000 families in the South of Brazil. These statistics give reason to Jean Ziegler, special Rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on the Right to Food. Hunger in Brazil cannot be blamed on nature as in some other countries. In Brazil the unjust concentration of wealth and income and the absence of sustainable public policies explain the poverty and misery of the majority of our people. These are the traces - in this, the beginning of the twenty-first century - of our legacy of colonialism and slavery. We have land in abundance and enough people wanting to work and produce. We need the political will to accomplish a new abolition in Brazil. Osvaldo Russo, Statistician, Former President of INCRA (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária) *Translated by Greg Downey, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame