INCRA regional office, following a procedure that lacks clarity and for which little technical assistance is available. Lastly, land redistribution is delayed because of the failure to implement the constitutional provisions allowing the use of slave labour or environmental degradation to be considered as grounds for expropriation. The same can be said of the extremely low tax rate on rural property, which provides no disincentive to landowners who acquire or occupy land but do not realize its social function. The Special Rapporteur encourages the Government to review each of these obstacles to the acceleration of the land redistribution process and the successful development of settlements in areas which are unproductive. 5. The impact of trade and export-led agriculture 43. The Special Rapporteur acknowledges the importance of international trade to the development strategy of Brazil, but notes that both the pursuit of access to foreign markets and the greater degree of openness of the domestic market to trade must be accompanied by serious consideration of the effects — economic, social and environmental — on different groups within the country and on the sustainability of the process seen in its entirety. He recalls, to this effect, the recommendations that he formulated in the report drafted following his mission to the World Trade Organization.[36] From the point of view of the right to adequate food, what matters is not only the aggregate impacts of improved access to foreign markets and a fairer international trading system that is currently heavily skewed in favour of rich countries, but also the distributional effect of a more liberalized market on the poorest Brazilian households. It will be crucial, in this context, to ensure that the situation of households depending on family farming does not worsen, while households depending on the larger farms would benefit, as result of the expansion of export volumes. The commendable efforts made in favour of family farming should be stepped up as markets expand, and not lowered, despite the temptation to support as a matter of priority the large farms that are most competitive on international markets. 44. Brazil offers a particularly interesting context because of the coexistence of both a competitive agro-industrial, exportfocused sector and a vibrant family agricultural sector that is responsible for the greater part of the domestic market while also contributing to exports. These two models of agriculture have served the country well in different contexts: the agro-export sector has ensured the exports required to ensure stability of the country’s balance-of-payments, whereas family farming has allowed Brazil not only to ensure food security in times of commodity price volatility, but also to ensure increased revenues and employment among the poorest populations of the country. Brazil should therefore continue to promote family agriculture, and ensure that it is afforded the support required to face the challenges of an eventual liberalization of agricultural trade. 45. The effects of trade liberalization on other activities, including industrial activities, and on urban populations should also be assessed. There is some evidence that liberalization since the 1990s — although associated with a significant reduction of poverty — has deepened the international division of labour and has resulted, in Brazil, in a certain level of deindustrialization and reduction of the value added in its exports, including in the agricultural sector. Expanded exports in agricultural products and increased investment in the Brazilian stock- and bond-markets are already resulting in considerable currency appreciation, which might harm other Brazilian exports, leading, in the long term, to deindustrialization. While industrial goods represent a larger proportion of Brazilian exports, the exports of primary commodities have been growing at a much greater rate. It is because of these uncertainties regarding the overall and distributional effects of increased agricultural trade that a comprehensive, participative impact assessment on the right to food should be conducted by Brazil. 6. Agrofuels: ethanol and biodiesel production 46. The Special Rapporteur takes note of the ongoing debate about the role of agrofuels in Brazilian development strategies. Brazil is expected to produce in excess of 563 million tons of sugar cane in 2009. It is the world’s largest producer of both raw and refined sugar, accounting for a third of global sugar-cane production, and 40 per cent of worldwide sugar exports. Many of the State’s ethanol plants are actually compound sugar mill/distillery complexes, capable of producing both refined sugar and ethanol and of shifting from 60 per cent ethanol and 40 per cent sugar to 60 per cent sugar and 40 per cent ethanol. This allows Brazil to capitalize on the volatile price structure of the international sugar market by producing more sugar when rates are high, and more ethanol when rates are comparatively lower, thus maximizing the return on sugar cane. In addition, sugar-cane mills in certain cases provide low-carbon and affordable electricity to a number of rural households. 47. Although, according to the Government, the Próalcool programme launched in 1974 has led to 600 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide being emitted in the atmosphere as a result of the replacement of gasoline by ethanol in transport, there are mounting concerns that the current expansion of sugar-cane plantations for ethanol may not be sustainable because of its social and environmental impacts.[37] The Brazilian Government has not remained inactive in the light of such concerns. The Special Rapporteur notes with interest: the initiative of the Government in conducting a national agroecological zoning, and denying governmental support to plantations that fail to comply with it; the recent Presidential proposal to prohibit the cultivation of sugar cane on 81 per cent of the agricultural land; and the National Commitment on working conditions in sugar cane agreed upon by the Government, employees and employers on 25 June 2009. These developments are welcome, as they demonstrate the will of both the Government and the other stakeholders to improve the sustainability of the production of ethanol from sugar cane. At the same time, sugar-cane production continues to be based upon a monocropping agricultural model that has certain environmental negative externalities. It results in a loss of biodiversity. The intensive use of pesticides may contaminate water reserves. The use of vinasse in the fields for fertigation purposes may contaminate land and groundwater, and the practice of sugar cane burning produces large, and unaccounted for, amounts of greenhouse gas emission, also resulting in serious and immediate impacts for the surrounding communities. In addition, as indicated above, the expansion of ethanol production may lead to reconcentration of land. Finally, there are recent indications that working conditions on the sugar-cane plantations remain very poor — and in many cases create a health hazard for the workers involved — and that wages remain low;[38] although a positive step, the recent National Commitment to improve these conditions remains a voluntary instrument and is no substitute for stronger monitoring of compliance with labour legislation. Brazil has in place a number of instruments to achieve this, including relative to the maintenance of a list of companies which do not comply with labour legislation.[39] It is encouraged to pursue its efforts in this direction. 48. The Special Rapporteur has repeatedly called for the definition of an international consensus on the sustainability of the