The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) adopted last week a new interpretation on rural lease contracts, reports the Famato System. By three votes to two, the Ministers of the Third Class understood that the execution of a rural lease in which a price was fixed in bags deserves consideration, since the clause was signed by both contractors, according to their will and practice in the region.
The decision given in Resp n. 1,692,763 / MT changed the interpretation previously adopted by the STJ, which previously did not allow contractual enforcement when the price was stipulated in products, due to a prohibition in the Regulation of the Statute of the Earth. Undoubtedly, according to the entity, this change of understanding will reflect in the decisions of first instance and courts of justice of all the country.
For the Famato System, the decision represents a great advance for the rural productive sector and demonstrates the recognition of the STJ on the changes of the Brazilian agriculture that until then were not updated in the Statute of the Earth.
For more than 20 years, the STJ understood that the prices of rural estates could only be established in values and not in products, as established in art. 18 of Decree No. 59,566 / 1966, which regulated the Land Statute, rendering null and void the clauses of contracts that contravened this provision, which, consequently, made it impossible to collect the credit through the executive channel.
The dissenting vote in the session that debated the issue this week was by Minister Nancy Andrighi, accompanied by ministers Paulo de Tarso Sanseverino and Marco Aurélio Bellizze, in an appeal against the decision of the Court of Justice of Mato Grosso (TJ / MT) which had accepted the performance of the contract.
In her vote, based on objective good faith and on the contradictory behavior of the contractor, the magistrate said that “to understand the unfeasibility of the execution would be tantamount to rewarding the applicant’s contradictory behavior, invoking the nullity of the clause only when the an executive process that aimed at satisfying unpaid installments, in clear offense to the legitimate trust deposited in the legal business by the defendant. The good faith of the individual has, in my view, a force to prevent the consequence of the invalidity of the lease agreement in fixed quantity of products. “
Minister Paulo de Tarso Sanseverino added: “I have been a judge since 1986 and toured several cities in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul. Cities in which there were minifundio and latifundio cities. In all of them, the custom was exactly the fixing of the price of the rent in product, even knowing of the restrictions of the Regulation of the Statute of the Earth. It was a custom rooted in the countryside and when I came to the STJ, I discovered that this custom was also in all of Brazil, especially in the Midwest, particularly in Mato Grosso. “
Next, Minister Bellizze concluded that this was the custom of the country, and the divergence arose in the High Court. “Matter is not examined in the light of local peculiarities, custom, tradition, in spite of recognizing the strength of the old precedent. The modality of agribusiness has changed, relations have changed and the mismatch today is between customs and tradition and the judicial decision itself, “said the magistrate.
The lawyer and director of research and events at the Brazilian Institute of Juridical and Multidisciplinary Studies of Agribusiness (IBEJMA), Luciana Monduzzi Figueiredo, followed the session and defended this thesis in the STJ. According to her, the Court of Justice of Mato Grosso (TJMT) already recognized the validity of rural lease contracts that fix prices on products and the consequent feasibility of execution, given the customs and practices and market practice of agribusiness.
She advocates an urgent revision of the rules of the Land Statute as an old (1964) legislation and was regulated two years later in a context where it was intended to protect the vulnerable parties involved. “We can no longer consider that any tenant is hypersufficient since we are talking about economically active rural producers,” he said.
According to the manager of the Legal Nucleus of Famato, Elizete Ramos, the decision of the STJ is of paramount importance for the sector. “For us, the decision of the STJ this week represents a new chapter for the Brazilian Agro and shows that Justice is looking at the sector with new eyes,” he said.
Study
In September, Famato delivered a letter to the ministers of the STJ demonstrating the need for a new interpretation of the provisions of the Land Statute regarding rural lease. When the statute was created, more than 70% of the Brazilian population lived in the countryside and lived in family farming, whose production was destined only to consumption and the domestic market. Currently, agricultural production is directed to the foreign market and the sector is globalized.
A study by the Mato Grosso Institute for Agricultural and Livestock Economics (Imea) shows why the cost of agricultural lease in Mato Grosso, for example, occurs by setting the price in product. Among the reasons is the reduction of the risk of contractual non-compliance on the part of the tenants, since the commitment of the gross revenue with the payment of the rent of the soybean, for example, is smaller in the years in which there is retreat of price and productivity of the crop if compared to the commitment from the price setting in cash.
This text was translated by machine from Brazilian Portuguese.