UPDATE 1-Brazil peasants end Vale railroad protest

(Recasts with protest end; adds byline; changes dateline from Sao Paulo)

By Denise Luna

SAO PAULO, March 10 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Brazilian peasant farmers ended a daylong blockade on Monday of a railroad operated by mining giant Vale, one of several multinational companies targeted by a wave of protests.

The activists cleared the Vitoria-Minas railroad in the central state of Minas Gerais peacefully in the afternoon, after Vale obtained a court order to have them removed, a spokesman for the activist group Via Campesina told Reuters.

Vale (VALE5.SA: Quote, Profile, Research)(RIO.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's biggest exporter of iron ore, said because of the protest it did not transport 300,000 tonnes of ore on Monday.

Vale said it was evaluating when it would resume shipment.

The Via Campesina group was protesting against the construction by Vale and its partner of a dam in the area known as Aimores that would flood an area the size of 2,000 soccer fields.

The iron ore is shipped to Tubarao port and then loaded onto ships for export.

In October, the leftist Movement of the Landless Rural Workers, or MST, and its related international umbrella organization, Via Campesina, blocked Vale's other railroad in Carajas for two days, briefly leaving a pellets plant without raw materials.