rural establishments obtain over 43 per cent of all agricultural credit, while farmers with fewer than 100 ha (88 per cent of the total number of establishments) captured only 30 per cent. The census does not provide clear indication of how much of publicly funded credit and subsidy programmes are captured by small and large farmers. However, it is well established that the high level of credit default among large farmers — unrelated to climatic or crop price variations — has resulted in repeated rescheduling of their debt, with part of the default cost and risk being transferred to the Government, which in effect subsidizes agribusiness – some of which is clearly inefficient.[31] Central bank data for 2008 shows that PRONAF funds represented only 13 per cent of the total value of loans to agricultural establishments,[32] despite the fact that family agriculture produced 38 per cent of the total value of agricultural output.[33] The focus on family farming in publicly subsidized credits is thus entirely justified, given the existing imbalances. The Special Rapporteur also encourages the Government to explore how it could be ensured that support will also reach the most vulnerable farmers, who should be assisted in overcoming barriers stemming from generally poor levels of education, lack of documentation, geographical distance and the lack of information. It should also conduct a review of the distributional aspects of its credit afforded to agriculture, and the possibility of increasing credit to family farming as a share of total credit, given this sector’s greater social and food security impact. 38. The Programme for the Acquisition of Food plays a particularly important role by ensuring that the Brazilian Corporation for Provisioning will purchase food from small farmers and encouraging the acquisition of food by family farmer cooperatives. Act No. 11,947 of 16 June 2009 provides that a minimum of 30 per cent of all food acquired for the school feeding programme should be sourced from family farms. This innovative policy links social programmes to support to family farming, and could be scaled up in the future. It represents a powerful encouragement to family farming: for the fiscal year 2009, the total value of the National School Feeding Programme was R$ 2.2 billion (US$ 1.2 billion), ensuring that R$ 733 million will be purchased from family-farming establishments. The Special Rapporteur expresses the hope that the priority given in legislation to family farms, including assentamentos and those of indigenous communities and Quilombolas, will be realized in the future. 39. There is a heated debate within the Brazilian society about how to manage a possible coexistence between large-scale, industrial farming, on the one hand, and small-scale family farming on the other hand. Such a debate is welcome, but should take into account not only the question of productivity per hectare or per active labourer, but also the environmental and social dimensions of farming. Some forms of agriculture have important environmental impacts that are not accounted for, particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation, contamination of water tables and crop genetic erosion: these are social costs that are not reflected in the prices of commodities. Conversely, other forms of agriculture may contribute to the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystems. Similarly, the impact of agriculture on the creation of employment and the incomes of the poorest groups of the population in the rural areas should be taken into account in assessing different forms of agricultural development. 4. Agrarian reform 40. Guideline 8.10 of the Voluntary Guidelines to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security recommends advancing land reform to enhance access to productive resources for the poor and women.[34] Building on this guideline, the Member States of the Food and Agriculture Organization emphasized the “essential role” of agrarian reform in the realization of basic human rights and food security at the Porto Alegre 2006 International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development. One of the most important challenges that Brazil is facing in the progressive realization of the right to food is the extraordinarily widespread inequality in access to land, which the country appears unable, under the current framework, to tackle effectively. Some 2.4 million farms (47 per cent of the total) with less than 10 ha cover only 2.7 per cent of the agricultural surface, whereas 47,000 large properties (>1,000 ha) — although constituting only 1 per cent of farms — cover 43 per cent of the land. The 2006 Agricultural Census, carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, reports a Gini coefficient for land distribution in Brazil of 0.872. This means that there is a higher degree of inequality than in 1995–1996, when the last census was conducted. As illustrated by the example of the state of São Paulo, where land concentration increased by 6.1 per cent, the planting of more sugar cane, itself the result of incentives for the production of ethanol, seems to have played a role in this situation. 41. The Special Rapporteur commends the efforts of INCRA to ensure a more equitable redistribution of land, in accordance with the principle established under the Constitution that property shall respect its social function. INCRA is responsible for executing land reform policy and supporting new settlements. Between its establishment in 1970 and 2006, this agency has founded over 8,000 settlements, covering 64 million hectares, and benefiting nearly 1 million families. Of these totals, the period of 2003–2006 accounts for 29.9 per cent of settlements, 27.6 per cent of families and 45.3 per cent of the surface of land distribution, which shows considerable commitment by INCRA to carrying out its mission. Based on the mapping of families living in precarious encampments and settled families, the Special Rapporteur notes that in the contested areas of south-east, central and coastal Brazil — which are far more fertile and integrated into the domestic market — there is a huge, unmet demand for land. In contrast, there are a large number of settlements in northern Brazil. This illustrates the fact that the conflict for land is being mediated by the State by displacing landless peasants to the north, slowly dissolving the tensions in the highly productive areas of the south-east, but increasing pressure on land in the Amazon region. 42. Agrarian reform still encounters important obstacles. First, the index of productivity on the basis of which land may be found unproductive and thus “de-propriated”, has not been updated since 1975, despite the important advances made in improving yields since this period. For instance, average yields in sugar cane have increased 65 per cent since 1975, and the increase for soy beans has been of 53 per cent[35]. Even when land is found to be unproductive, landowners may be tempted to speculate on the length of litigation, being rewarded by high compensatory interests for using tactics to delay judicial proceedings. Because of this situation, strict time limits should be imposed during judicial proceedings, in order to accelerate those proceedings, while incentives for landowners to abuse the judicial process should be removed. Second, when landless families occupy land — even when it is not cultivated — this could make registration and “de-propriation” impossible under the existing legislation, even where the other conditions are met. Third, once a settlement is recognized (assentamento), the settlement development plan that must be prepared in order for the settlement to benefit from credit and other forms of support sometimes requires months or years to be approved by the INCRA regional office, following a procedure that lacks clarity and for which little technical assistance is available. Lastly, land