Beyond the dualities: a nuanced understanding of Brazilian soybean producers

Abstract

Brazil has become one of the main agricultural commodity and food exporters in the world and countries of the Middle East are part of its consumer market. On the other hand, the increasing demand coming from these countries impacts the type of farming practices and categories taking place in Brazil. In many cases, commodity production is associated with the agribusiness model, criticized for its social and environmental costs. In this context, it is important to unveil who are responsible for production of commodities and what is behind the concept of agribusiness farming in Brazil. This paper aims at describing and discussing a more nuanced and multifaceted notion of soybean producers in the light of an empirical study conducted in Canarana at the Upper Xingu river basin, in the state of Mato Grosso. Land tenure, scale, and production models contribute to defining the farming categories in place. In this particular region, medium size farms prevail over large ones as a consequence of the type of colonization of the land as well as for historical reasons. This work suggests that, to understand the social dynamics taking place at an agricultural frontier, one has to break from the dichotomies that separate groups on opposite sides and recognize the heterogeneity that comprises farming categories in a food-export country, such as Brazil. This understanding will thus help to identify and formulate future public policies and strategies that can contribute to ensuring food availability as well as good quality of both life and the environment in an increasingly interconnected world.

Three Decades of Changes in Brazilian Municipalities and Their Food Production Systems

“…The new variable SoyMFarm describes the average soybean farm size in each municipality. This approach to spatialize soybean farm size at the national level considers previous literature and allows us to evaluate the coherence of results [16,18,38,49,50].…”

“…For example, small farms in Brazil generally range between 1 and 5 ha in average but in the case of soybean, they can be considered small having 6-24 ha [54]. The categorical classes of soybean farm size were based on previous literature [5,18,38,49,50,54] and supported by the IBGE Agricultural Census of 2017, where among the major soybean producer States, the minimum average soybean farm size at municipality level were found in Santa Catarina State (36 ha) and the maximum in Piauí (2187 ha). For the purpose of this study, we used small to class A, medium to classes B and C, medium-large to D, and large to E and F. Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied (normal distribution of data was rejected by a Shapiro-Wilk test using statistical significance threshold of p = 0.01) taking the SoyMFarmClass as the independent variable, allowing us to test our hypothesis that significant differences in our dependent variables are found among classes according the average soybean farm size.…”

“…Brazil has increased its participation in the global food production and trade, becoming a major producer and exporter of cereals, soybean, and beef [37]. Brazilian food systems have been shaped by domestic and international forces during the last three decades, a period of monetary stabilization, public cuts in agricultural incentives, and entrance of private firms leveraging farmers' choices towards a more capital-intensive agribusiness system [16,[38][39][40]. Partially explained by the national colonization history, partially by geographical location, infrastructure, and environmental conditions, Brazil has developed different agricultural production regions, varying from small-to-medium farm sizes to large ones, the last often associated to Midwestern and Northern regions of the country [5,16,18,38,41].…”

“…Brazilian food systems have been shaped by domestic and international forces during the last three decades, a period of monetary stabilization, public cuts in agricultural incentives, and entrance of private firms leveraging farmers' choices towards a more capital-intensive agribusiness system [16,[38][39][40]. Partially explained by the national colonization history, partially by geographical location, infrastructure, and environmental conditions, Brazil has developed different agricultural production regions, varying from small-to-medium farm sizes to large ones, the last often associated to Midwestern and Northern regions of the country [5,16,18,38,41]. Since the 1940s, the Brazilian Federal Government started colonization projects that aimed to integrate the Midwest and Northern regions with the rest of the country by connecting them to the national economy as a provider of agricultural products and support for the industrialization of the southeast [42,43].…”

Arranjo institucional para o combate ao desmatamento no município de Querência/MT

“…InstitutoSocioambiental, 2012). Foram os irmãos Villas Boas que estabeleceram os primeiros contatos com do Xingu e São Félix do Xingu(Jepson et al 2010;Empinotti 2015;ISA -Instituto Socioambiental, 2003). Contudo, não somente de grandes projetos agropecuários se fez a ocupação da região, a política de colonização, do INCRA, na década de 1970 e 1980 criou assentamentos rurais, que foram ocupados por pequenos produtores majoritariamente vindos do sul doBrasil (ISA -Instituto Socioambiental, 2012).…”