SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP):

Some 300 protesters blocked a key iron ore export railway belonging to mining giant Vale as nationwide protests against multinational corporations continued yesterday for a third day.

Companhia Vale do Rio Doce SA said in a statement that farm workers started blocking the railway line that carries 70 cargo trains and about 1,000 passengers daily.

Close to 1 million metric tons of iron ore and iron pellets are transported every day along the 560-mile (905-kilometre) line that links the company's mines in Minas Gerais state to the port of Tubarao on the Atlantic coast.

Demonstrators from the Via Campesina activist group and the Landless Rural Workers Movement are protesting government policies they say favour large corporations at the expense of small farmers.

About 700 activists also protested yesterday in front of a fertiliser plant owned by agribusiness company Bunge Ltd in the southern state of Parana, the government's Agencia Brasil news service reported, and about 1,000 protesters blocked four highways in the states of Pernambuco and Goias. There was no reports of violence.

Invaded dams

On Tuesday, thousands of rural workers organised by the two movements invaded dams, railways, plantations and corporate headquarters in 13 Brazilian states.

The following day, police in the southern city of Porto Alegre fired rubber bullets and tear gas at some 500 protesters who tried to invade a supermarket to protest high food prices.

Police said five demonstrators and six officers were injured, none seriously. About a dozen protesters were arrested.

The vast majority of Brazil's food supply is produced by large corporations. But earlier this week, the federal government announced a program to provide small farmers with low-interest loans of 100,000 Brazilian reals (US$61,000) or more to boost production on the country's roughly 1 million family farms.