A Sales Coordination Hub for Smallholders

Like many who follow international rural politics, I had long heard of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). Keywords such as landless peasants, land occupation, struggle, and land reform are so strongly associated with the group that I instinctively equated it with a movement “rooted in rural settlements and sustained by continuous resistance”. It was not until October 2025, when I stepped into one of their agricultural produce warehouses in Brazil, that this ingrained perception was completely shattered.

The warehouse is not particularly large, covering just over 2,000 square metres, and remains under construction: while walls in some sections are yet to be finished, the functional zoning is clear—dry goods are stacked on one side, while the other is dedicated to fresh fruits and vegetables. A staff member showed me an inventory list spanning more than ten pages, densely packed with three to four hundred items: coffee, chickpeas, grain flours, jams, vegetable sauces, spice blends… It was then that I realised, the MST is far from exclusively focused on “the struggle for land”; they are also tackling something far more arduous and easily overlooked—bringing smallholders’ scattered produce to market at scale.

“Ecologically grown produce is incredibly difficult to sell” is a simple yet profound conclusion I have drawn after years of dedicated research into China’s ecological agriculture sector. Following extensive discussions with MST partners, however, I found their sales model stands in stark contrast to the decentralised, fragmented attempts common among domestic peers. MST relies neither on occasional market stalls nor on word-of-mouth promotion via social media. Instead, they have established a complete system encompassing warehousing, order coordination, compliance and certification, channel development, and logistics, turning agricultural sales into a cyclical and sustainable operational mechanism. The warehouse before me is precisely the key node through which MST has embedded itself into Brazil’s urban food networks.

I was keen to understand precisely how they had built this coordinated sales system; more importantly, I wanted to discover what transferable lessons this Brazilian practice might hold for us, as we continue to grapple with how smallholders of ecologically grown produce can efficiently access the market.

After Land Occupation

The full Portuguese name for MST is Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, typically translated into English as the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement. In Chinese, it is commonly rendered in two ways: the “Landless Workers” Movement’ and the “Landless Peasant Movement”, with the latter being the more widely used term.

Its rise is closely tied to Brazil’s social and historical roots: the plantation economy inherited from the colonial era produced a starkly unequal land distribution—42.5% of Brazil’s land is controlled by less than 1% of the population, a reality that directly gave rise to around 4.5 million landless people. To break this cycle, in 1984, 92 farmer leaders convened in Cascavel, Paraná, to formally establish the MST. Its aim was straightforward and resolute: advance land reform, organise the landless, and enable people to truly put down roots on the land, to farm and to live.

Under Brazilian law, land must continuously serve a productive function, otherwise it may be deemed “ownerless”. MST has strategically leveraged this provision to develop a phased strategy of struggle: first, establishing camps or settlements on plots they deem “idle and failing to deliver social or productive value” (often beginning by settling in and taking root); then organising production and communal living; and finally, navigating a protracted legal and administrative process. Through litigation, policy advocacy, political negotiation and other avenues, the movement works to secure government recognition of the land’s newly restored “productive function”, making legal ownership a tangible possibility. This process is fraught with contention and hardship, with bloody clashes, armed suppression and forced evictions occurring all too frequently.

More than forty years on, MST’s struggles and practices have expanded across 23 of Brazil’s 26 states, yielding remarkable achievements: it has helped 450,000 families secure land, and spearheaded the formation of 1,900 farmers’ associations, 185 cooperatives, and 120 agricultural processing plants.

The MST’s widespread influence has directed most researchers towards its mobilisation tactics, organisational structure, camp life and political strategies—dimensions that are undoubtedly significant. Yet from the practical reality of making ends meet, a more pressing question remains: once the land is occupied, how is a livelihood sustained? Securing land access does not automatically translate into a sustainable income or reliable long-term security.

For residents of the settlements, the challenges of survival are highly tangible: some plots are simply unsuited to staple crops, making self-sufficiency elusive. Even on arable land, committing to ecological farming without pesticides or synthetic fertilisers often leads to the familiar dilemma where quality produce struggles to command premium prices. It is only by marketing their harvests at viable rates and converting crops into cash that families can cover day-to-day expenses and sustain their households.

Within the mainstream food system, smallholders in the settlements are inherently at a disadvantage. Lacking commercial sales experience, their fragmented harvests stand little chance of gaining traction with large supermarkets and established retail channels. Consequently, the core question gradually comes into focus: how to consolidate the scattered output of individual smallholders into an organised supply, securing stable and continuous sales.

A Sales Coordination Hub for Smallholders

Our research took place in Belo Horizonte, in south-eastern Brazil. As the capital of Minas Gerais state, the city has a population of around 2.5 million.

We were welcomed by a platform called Concentra. The team comprises just four or five staff members, all remarkably young, with the oldest in their early forties. We spoke at length with three of them. They shared a striking common trait: an unshakeable conviction that their work is both valuable and meaningful. Two have lived and worked in settlements—MST settlements are not merely residential areas but are fully equipped with schools, basic healthcare facilities, and communal spaces. Having grown up there from childhood, they were immersed in MST’s educational and value systems.

While MST’s value system is complex, it centres on four key pillars: the struggle for land, the struggle for agrarian and land reform, the struggle for social change, and organisation and education. The collective lifestyle and structured education within the settlements foster a deep commitment to these values among younger members, continuously nurturing a core group of individuals willing to dedicate themselves to the movement’s organisational work.

After graduating from university, one of Concentra’s staff members took part in a government-organised rural service scheme akin to a “teaching in the west” initiative, before ultimately choosing to return and dedicate themselves to the MST network. My local guide, Luiza, works as a university lecturer and has been involved with the MST for years. She remarked: “They are all incredibly bright.” Clearly, through decades of activism, the MST has built a robust talent pool that consistently draws in capable individuals.

Concentra operates as both an intermediary and a coordination hub. On the supply side, it works directly with seven cooperatives in Minas Gerais while also coordinating products from MST cooperatives across the country. On the demand side, it connects with a range of buyers, including government agencies, supermarkets, and restaurants. The team receives incoming orders and allocates them to the most suitable cooperatives based on each group’s specific resources and production strengths. By managing this distribution centrally, they effectively prevent destructive competition between cooperatives. Where needed, Concentra also provides advance payments, offering crucial financial backing for smallholders’ production cycles.

Beyond this, the platform also centrally manages warehousing, sorting, logistics and distribution, product line development, processing coordination, and compliance and certification. In effect, it absorbs the extensive market support tasks that would otherwise fall on individual smallholders, lowering the barrier to market entry through specialisation.

A staff member shared the story behind a jam made from do-yi fruit (a tropical produce variety). The product came about when a mining company approached the cooperative directly: having caused ecological damage to an MST settlement through its operations, the firm wanted to order 1,000 cartons of jam as part of a compensation package. After Concentra coordinated production with its members, the company reported that the flavour was excellent, prompting the team to develop it into a permanent line for regular sale. However, bringing agricultural products to market requires clearing a series of hurdles: meeting food hygiene and safety standards, designing compliant packaging and labelling, and securing various registrations and permits. Fortunately, Concentra employs a dedicated legal team. Ultimately, through political dialogue and lobbying, they persuaded government authorities to endorse a compliance pathway for the product, finally paving the way for its official launch.

Staff note candidly: developing any product is a lengthy process that demands coordinated efforts across regulatory compliance, policy engagement, production organisation, and sales channels to truly survive. It is precisely this ability to ‘standardise products, secure compliance, and integrate them into wider distribution networks’ that represents the most critical gap for smallholders. Rather than leaving individual farmers to navigate this alone, the MST has transformed it into a collective capability for the entire network.

I also noticed they are incubating a new in-house brand, Raízes do Campo (‘Roots of the Countryside’). Take one of their coffee blends as an example: the packaging clearly indicates that the product is jointly produced by two cooperatives, sourcing from 604 farming households, and bears the official Brazilian certification mark for ‘family farming’ (agricultura familiar). Notably, the brand deliberately omits the MST logo. The reasoning is pragmatic: in Brazil, the MST is a distinctly left-wing political symbol. While it commands respect within certain circles, that very label can become a hindrance when trying to access mainstream retail channels, particularly major supermarket chains. Consequently, they have developed a ‘neutral brand’ to pave the way for integration into wider distribution networks.

Currently, Raízes do Campo has successfully secured shelf space in a number of local community supermarkets. Staff members are candid that partnering with major supermarket chains is exceptionally difficult; buyers impose stringent requirements and aggressively drive prices down. Nevertheless, the team has never stopped trying, and products from several cooperatives have even successfully gone on sale at Walmart. This pragmatic approach struck me deeply: get the business running first, keep strategies flexible, and always prioritise scaling up to benefit more farming households.

Production and consumption

An ecosystem of two-way connection

When it comes to ecological farming, we often harbour a romanticised notion: that smallholders naturally favour ecological growing methods, are keen to collaborate, and actively engage in community affairs. Yet the reality is precisely the opposite—initially mobilising farmers to join cooperative production and sales networks proves extremely difficult; persuading them to transition to ecological farming meets similar resistance, and outsiders frequently overestimate smallholders’ willingness to participate.

Staff members revealed that in a settlement of 100 households, only around a dozen active participants can typically be mobilised reliably in the early stages. The strategy follows a pilot-driven approach: a small group of pioneers trials the system first to demonstrate that it is profitable and offers steady returns. Once neighbouring farmers see concrete profits and realise the model works in practice, participation is gradually broadened. Guiding farmers to transition to ecological agriculture and achieving product standardisation, meanwhile, is a much longer, incremental process.

One regret from this research trip was being unable to visit a settlement to observe the full production process in person, or to delve deeply into its internal division of labour and profit-sharing mechanisms. Nevertheless, Concentra makes it clear that the bulk of the profits from sales are returned to the producers for autonomous distribution within the cooperatives. The market success of the products thus becomes the primary driver incentivising farmers to engage in production.

MST’s agricultural produce is directed mainly towards three sales channels, creating a diversified and resilient distribution network.

The first category comprises local speciality restaurants. We visited an establishment run by a family from northern Minas Gerais. The owner’s relatives reside in an MST settlement, and she had previously worked in a settlement kitchen herself. The restaurant specialises in seasonal regional dishes, with most ingredients grown by her relatives or sourced from the settlement’s cooperatives.

We visited during lunch hours and the restaurant was bustling, with tables full and business thriving. MST staff took the opportunity to bring produce from other cooperatives for the owners to try, hoping the establishment would not only source them for its kitchen but also stock them for resale. Our meal that day was authentically Brazilian: bananas served with rice and beans, accompanied by a tomato and vegetable salad, pumpkin, and a dish known as Folofa (stir-fried cassava flour). Every ingredient was sourced directly from the settlements. This channel relies on personal bonds and cultural affinity to forge connections. While it scales slowly, the foundation of trust is strong, leading to enduring and stable partnerships.

The second category comprises niche boutiques specialising in organic and ecologically grown food. One store we visited, situated in a relatively progressive neighbourhood, displayed MST’s coffee beans, jams and vegetable preserves alongside other organic goods rather than on dedicated shelving. To secure placement in such outlets, products must be competitive in both price and quality. A quick comparison on the spot showed that MST’s offerings were more competitively priced than comparable organic produce. Furthermore, the MST network operates around twenty direct retail outlets across the country, supplemented by an online sales platform that further broadens their retail reach.

The third category, which took me most by surprise, is the local government. Staff explained that this Belo Horizonte warehouse supplies fresh ingredients to community kitchens operating under the National Programme for Food Acquisition (PAA). These kitchens primarily serve marginalised urban groups such as waste pickers, turning over around one tonne of agricultural produce every fortnight. Another key partner is the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE), which aims to improve school meal quality by encouraging the procurement of local family-farmed produce and increasing the proportion of fresh ingredients. (Brazil faces a similar challenge with the proliferation of ultra-processed foods.)

The core objectives of these two national programmes align closely with the nature of MST’s agricultural produce, establishing a stable foundation for collaboration. Yet the scope for such partnerships is inextricably tied to the political climate. Under Lula’s administration, policies were relatively permissive, and MST enjoyed considerable political recognition and backing. Conversely, during Bolsonaro’s presidency, numerous joint initiatives were shelved, the movement’s operating space was squeezed, and it was even labelled an “adversarial force”. As a result, the team openly acknowledged their concerns: should right-wing politics stage a resurgence in Brazil, their position could once again be left on the defensive.

  Can China replicate the blueprint?

MST’s agricultural produce network is, at its core, an extension of its broader social movement. Decades of accumulated movement-building have provided this network with a solid foundation — encompassing a deep talent pool, a shared ideological consensus, a mature model of production organisation, rising consumer awareness, and a degree of political recognition.

It is a tightly interlocking system; without decades of struggle and educational groundwork, MST’s produce sales network would simply not exist. This practical model is deeply rooted in Brazil’s local context and defies direct replication. Put simply, MST’s agricultural network may appear to be a mere sales operation, but it is in fact the outward manifestation of the movement’s achievements: the movement lays the infrastructure, and the network converts that infrastructure into tangible livelihoods and resources for development.

Concentra’s operational model clearly reflects MST’s open and pragmatic approach: it neither shuns collaboration with mainstream systems nor clings to an insular market for its own people. Contract production, a multi-brand strategy, and even the seemingly paradoxical decision to omit the MST logo all serve a core purpose: tapping into wider sales channels, scaling operations and extending benefits to more smallholders. At this stage at least, they have sidestepped the common trap of growth spiralling out of control and ultimately exploiting the workforce. Instead, Concentra consistently emphasises that the platform must pass a greater share of profits back to producers, ensuring that smallholders’ interests remain firmly protected.

Political support acts as a ‘stabiliser’ in this equation: the government provides low-cost leases for warehouses, public procurement delivers steady orders, and policy programmes open institutional channels. This backing gives the agricultural network a firmer foundation to operate on. With such guarantees, sales forecasts become clearer, payments are more reliable, farmers’ motivation to participate strengthens, and the network can expand sustainably. Conversely, this also makes the network reliant on the political climate—a shift in the wind could quickly squeeze its room for manoeuvre.

The MST’s experience cannot be directly transposed to China. The social environment, political system, and organisational space we face differ fundamentally. In China, many ecological smallholders are forced to become ‘jack-of-all-trades farmers’: they must master cultivation techniques and sales skills, understand logistics and legal regulations, build brands, manage communities, and expand channels. Every step is an uphill struggle. During my fieldwork in villages across Guangdong, I witnessed this predicament firsthand—these farmers are not lacking in effort; rather, they are structurally forced to fight alone, deprived of collective support.

The core insight from the MST’s practice may be this: for smallholders to secure a foothold in the market, the key is not to keep pressuring individual farmers to master every ‘sales skill’, but to systematically integrate capabilities such as sales, compliance, warehousing, processing, and logistics, transforming them into collective and platform strengths—turning fragmented supply into something that can be standardised and scaled to meet market demands.

Ultimately, the distribution of ecologically grown produce has never been purely a market issue; it also carries a public dimension. It requires the coordinated effort of policy support, infrastructure, organisational capacity, and consumer awareness. It is precisely under the convergence of these conditions that the MST’s agricultural network has established its ‘production–distribution–resources–movement’ cycle: successful sales solidify the organisational foundations of the settlements; a stronger organisation, in turn, fuels the sustainable development of the MST’s values and mobilising power. This may well be the most valuable reflection this Brazilian experience offers to China’s ecological farming practitioners.

Unless otherwise stated, all images were photographed or produced by the author.

Edited by Tianle

Layout by Xiaoshu

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