Place-making at the frontier of Brazilian agribusiness

Abstract

The intricacies of one of the most relevant agribusiness frontiers in the world today-the north of the State of Mato Grosso, in the southern section of the Amazon, Brazil-are considered through a critical examination of place-making. Vast areas of Amazon rainforest and savannah vegetation were converted there, since the 1970s, into places of intensive soybean farming, basically to fulfil exogenous demands for land and agriculture production. The present assessment goes beyond the configuration of new places at the agricultural frontier, and starts with a qualitative intellectual jump: from place-making on the frontier to place-making as an ontological frontier in itself. It means that, instead of merely studying the frontier as a constellation of interconnected places, we examine the politicised genesis of the emerging places and their trajectory under fierce socio-ecological disputes. The consideration of almost five decades of intense historic-geographical change reveals an intriguing dialectics of displacement (of previous socio-ecological systems, particularly affecting squatters and indigenous groups, in order to create opportunities for migrants and companies), replacement (of the majority of disadvantaged farmers and poor migrants, leading to land concentration, widespread financialisation and the decisive influence of transnational corporations) and misplacement (which is the synthesis of displacement and replacement, demonstrated by mounting risks and a pervasive sentiment of maelstrom). Overall, there was nothing inevitable in the process of rural and regional development, but the problems, conflicts and injustices that characterise its turbulent geographical trajectory were all more or less visible from the outset.

Hegelian dialectics and ethnoclass differences

“…It is basically a massive production of 'less than nothing'. It cultivates and harvests its own nothingness, only disguised as 'regional development', leaving behind permanent environmental and social impacts (Ioris, 2018). Agribusiness is less than nothing also because it is based on the perpetuation of indifference through the instrumentalization of socio-spatial difference.…”

Making the Amazon a frontier: where less space is more

“…On the contrary, frontier-making will continue to expand and flourish around the world either through the incorporation of new areas hitherto subject to less capitalist influence, or with the replacement of previous frontiermaking activity with novel rounds of capitalist relations of production and reproduction. Accelerated market fluxes and population mobility do not dispense with spatial frontiers, because the modern Western world persistently strives for new places and landscapes to conquer (Ioris 2018b). One of the decisive features of capitalist modernity is how it aims to standardise location specific processes and incorporate them into the same market-centred rationality.…”

Environmental Roots of Development Problems

“…On the contrary, frontier making will continue to expand and flourish around the world either through the incorporation of new areas hitherto subject to less capitalist influence, or with the replacement of previous frontier making activity with novel rounds of capitalist relations of production and reproduction. Accelerated market fluxes and population mobility do not dispense with spatial frontiers because the modern Western world persistently strives for new places and landscapes to conquer (Ioris 2018b ). One of the decisive features of capitalist modernity is how it aims to standardise location-specific processes and incorporate them into the same market-centred rationality.…”