Chinese investment in the Brazilian soybean sector: Navigating relations of private governance

Abstract

This paper examines how Chinese agribusiness firms are engaging with established systems of private governance in the Brazilian soybean sector and how that engagement is variously accommodated, contested, and configured by local realities that reflect the uneven history of transnational agribusiness development across the Brazilian agro‐export region. Using qualitative data collected at three research sites that represent different historical moments in the Brazilian agro‐export region (Mato Grosso, Goiás, and Bahia), the paper argues that the social structures underlying the particular agrarian histories of these three subregions create unique contexts Chinese firms must navigate, which in turn shapes their engagement with the private agribusiness regime across space. Although the private agribusiness regime is often portrayed as a top‐down system of governance that subjugates the polity to the demands of capital, this framing neglects to understand how that system of power is contested, negotiated, and reshaped on the ground. These three cases serve to historicize the uneven penetration of Chinese firms across the Brazilian soybean sector.

Seeds of empire or seeds of friendship? The politics of the diffusion of Chinese cotton seeds in Tajikistan

“…Hence, attention to the local agrarian political economy is crucial to understanding the extent to which seeds are adopted, and whether, and to what extent, Chinese companies and their plans materialize on the ground. As Peine (2021, p. 73) noted in her analysis of the China‐Brazil soya trade: “the penetration of Chinese capital into [foreign economies] is as much a social and geographic process as a political and economic one” (see also Loughlin & Grimsditch, 2021).…”

Expanding through Precarity

“…The article also contributes to growing scholarship on Chinese overseas expansion. There is a significant amount of work on Chinese agricultural investment projects abroad which studies questions of international concern for Chinese agribusiness expansion (Chen et al 2017;Hofman & Ho 2012), drivers of expansion (Hofman 2016), agribusinesses' internal management (Xu et al 2014) or interaction with the state (Belesky & Lawrence 2019;Oliveira 2019) and the competitors (Peine 2021). The study, focusing on labour relations of contract farming, provides new insights into how a large overseas agricultural project 'with Chinese characteristics' can be organised in highly informal institutional environment.…”