Photo: Brazil's Landless
Farmers Meet Venezuela Coop
Sugar Workers' Coop
Supports 4,300
Families at 48 Mills
By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 11 (IPS) - The Harmony Agricultural Company has become Brazil’s largest worker-managed business in the solidarity economy. It provides employment for 4,300 families who work 26,000 hectares of land, and its main activity is producing sugar at 48 mills.

When the company was in crisis in 1993, the first reaction of the workers and their unions was the usual one of trying to ensure that the 2,300 workers who were dismissed received back pay and severance pay. But two years later, the unions took another approach.

Their goal was to win back the lost jobs and maintain the remaining ones, while continuing an activity essential to the economy of Catende, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco.

They applied for the owners of the company to be forced to declare bankruptcy, and took over the firm’s administration, under the supervision of the justice system. Since then, they have resumed sugar production and diversified into other agricultural and industrial activities.

El Grupo Red de Economía Solidaria del Perú ("The Peru Solidarity Economy Network Group") is a civila association made up of social enterprises, non-governmental organizations, religious organizations, entities of international cooperation working in Peru, and dedicated people that promote practices of associative economy and relationships of solidarity within the economy.

FBES is a national organization for articulation, debates, the elaboration of strategies and the mobilization of the solidarity economy movement in Brazil. (website in Portuguese only)

RedLASES is an open space for dialog and inspired articluation between solidarity economy intiatives and initiatives for the radicalization of democracy in the Latin America. (website in Spanish only)