Smallholders, Agrarian Reform, and Globalization in the Brazilian Amazon: Cattle versus the Environment

Abstract

Smallholder farming in the Brazilian Amazon has changed markedly over the last few decades, following a pervasive swing to cattle production observed across the basin. These changes have brought opportunities for accumulating a modicum of wealth that were not available in the early stages of colonization. At the same time, they have reconfigured livelihood systems away from diversified agriculture to a strong engagement with the cattle economy. They are also exposing smallholders to new forms of exploitation by transnational corporations, seeking to pass risk upstream to less powerful economic agents who provide inputs to production, such as calves. The case of Southeastern Pará provides a natural laboratory for investigating such phenomena, which the article considers through the presentation of data from field research conducted in the region over the past decade. Here, agrarian reform efforts have been particularly intense, and social movements have often espoused a green rhetoric in favor of diversified agriculture, even though smallholders show little interest in anything but cattle. Household level incentives promote Amazonia's emergent cattle economy, demonstrating how global production networks have reached into the basin, where production relations between smallholders provisioning calves to large ranching operations often resemble what has been referred to in the literature as "contract farming" land grabs, given the exploitive terms of trade.

Avoiding Amazonian Catastrophes: Prospects for Conservation in the 21st Century

“…Large-scale meatpackers often deal with independent brokers who collect animals of unknown origin from a wide variety of anonymous suppliers. 67 Such shortcomings are likely moot, since an energetic continuation of private sector engagement in the conservation quest appears unlikely under an administration intent on exploiting the resource potential of Amazonia. 64 Therefore, it is disappointing that a sustainable and economically viable alternative to cattle ranching has not been found, despite local successes with community-based forestry management, the extraction of non-timber forest products, and ecotourism.…”

Introduction: The Continued Importance of Smallholders Today

“…Increasingly, however, the forces external to the smallholder or smallholder communities emanate from well beyond the urban hinterland, constituting teleconnections. Research that explicitly considers the impact of teleconnections on smallholder land use and livelihoods is key to better understanding broader LULCC processes and patterns, as suggested in this special feature (see [59,60]). With increasing calls for studies related to teleconnections in land systems and sustainability science [71,72], it is worth stressing the importance of smallholders in teleconnections research.…”

“…Geographer Ritaumaria Pereira and colleagues [59] explore how smallholder farming in the Brazilian Amazon has changed over time. Drawing on mixed-methods field research in southeastern Pará, Pereira and colleagues show how smallholders are influenced and exploited by transnational cattle corporations and global production networks.…”

Corporate commitments to zero deforestation: An evaluation of externality problems and implementation gaps

“…For example, companies sourcing wood products rarely exclusively source these from (producers involved in) natural forests and may also source wood from (producers of ) planted forests. In some places in Latin America, an increasing number of smallholders are engaged in commercial forms of animal husbandry, where significant sales occur through intermediaries working with large-scale ranchers (Pereira et al 2016). Nevertheless, in appraising our study's results, it must be acknowledged that the failure of committers to account for certain negative externalities may be more socially and/or environmentally detrimental in some sectors than in others.…”