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This article is a reflection on the processes of land regularization enacted by the section 68 of the Temporary Constitutional Provisions Act of 1988 in Brazil and its deployment in the State administrative routines.We believe that new elements have been imposed and we should consider them when thinking about reparation policies and recognition of the recipients of these constitutional provisions. We use the expression "the battle of papers" to refer to the negotiations obstructed by the State notarial procedures. Efforts will be made to show the situations in which the struggle for social recognition challenges the idea in which it is conceived that the runaway slaves demand is merely territorial. Observed in their various confrontations, these processes conceal a moral vocation, led by the runaway slaves, that overflows the logical demand for the "World of papers" and allows us to visualize the tensions on the ways of materializing, moved from orality to writing, conducted by notions of science and permeated by notary logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pastureland maintenance is seen as a land-based measure to reduce dependency on feed concentrates and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock production in the EU, while providing other ecosystems services. This paper assesses potential market-mediated impacts, including global Land Use Change (LUC) and GHG emissions, from increased subsidies to pasture-based livestock production in the EU. A tax recycling strategy (TRS) is simulated against a baseline up to 2030 under the shared socioeconomic pathway 2 (SSP2). This implies a budget-neutral increase in the level of pasture subsidies in individual Member States, as land subsidies for other cropping activities decrease. We employ the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model GTAP in its recursive-dynamic version, GTAP-RDEM, extended with the Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) database FABIO to disaggregate agri-food sectors from 21 to 31. This approach allows considering price- and income-dependent feedbacks when assessing long-run changes in the global economy, improving the sectoral resolution relative to GTAP v10. The policy increases pastureland areas and cattle production in almost all EU Member States, whereas cropland and crop production decrease, causing significant changes across EU agri-food markets. Crop prices increase, leading to the reduced output of intensive animal production sectors, mainly pig and poultry. Cropland areas decrease and most EU countries increase imports of grain, oilseeds, and cakes, essentially soybean cake from Brazil and North America. While GHG emissions decrease in those EU countries where pasturelands expand mainly at the cost of croplands, GHG emissions increase in those countries where pastureland expansion comes with forest loss. As a result, net GHG emissions increase in the EU-27 in 2030 (+2.49 Mt CO 2 -eq). Emissions from LUC in major non-EU grain- and oilseed-exporting countries increase, e.g., by 102.52 Mt CO 2 -eq in Brazil and by 129.17 Mt CO 2 -eq in North America. The simulated policy shows that promoting extensive livestock per se does not meet the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy and the EU Green Deal. The TRS should be complemented with policies to foster crop diversification and promote the use of domestic feed sources (e.g., legumes) to effectively ensure feed self-sufficiency and that extensive cattle production in the EU does not lead to deforestation in carbon-rich countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article has as objective to analyze the emergence in El Salvador of family farming and the social category family farmer. To that purpose, this article uses mainly two theoretical concepts: family farming and policy transfer. Evidence suggests that the appropriation of the social category "family farmer" in El Salvador responds to an update of formerly used concepts small producer or commercial producer. Hence, it's not possible to find technical, theoretical or methodological grounds to justify the use of family farmer as new social category in El Salvador. The adoption of family farmer comes as a result of a policy transfer enhanced by three vectors: political affinity between Brazil's and El Salvador's presidents, bureaucrat's paper and work performed by intergovernmental organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to analyze the ideas about the creation of a model of Ministry of Agriculture implanted in the first quarter of the 20th century in Brazil and in the last years of the 19th century in Argentina. These ministries give us the policies directed to the adoption of a scientific agriculture in both countries. The paper raises questions about the advances of agronomic science and the interaction with an increasing state intervention in agriculture. The analysis is mainly focused in the contrasts and similarities with other producing countries and the consequences of the circulation of knowledge and technologies in these spaces. It also outlines a profile of the sugar production growth as a decisive factor to the sugar producers’ new demands for educational and research institutions in these sugar-related areas. The present work is the first approximation to the process of constitution and operation of a technicians’ network based on Argentinian and Brazilian sources, such as bulletins and technical leaflets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a vast literature on innovation and diffusion of technology in Agribusiness. The dominant explanation of dissemination of innovations emphasizes processes involving information flows through a social system. Research questions on innovation and diffusion of technology transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries. This article's objective is to investigate innovation and diffusion of technology in the context of agriculture in floodplains in provincial Amazonas, Brazil. A set of propositions were defined, focusing on factors that impact on the conceptualization of the process of innovation and diffusion. A qualitative research approach was employed, based on semi-structured interviews. In this study, the analytical stages of the mental process of diffusion do not determine adoption of innovation. The results suggest that the supply-side competitive environment, in conjunction with the influence of agribusiness, technical support, a development-oriented political agenda, university projects, and practices in the field can facilitate diffusion of technologies. This paper seeks to extend the current paradigm of understanding of innovations and diffusion, incorporating factors that apply in a specific agricultural context, suggesting elements that, if stimulated, can be communicated and assimilated within a social system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present topics that characterize the evolution of the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) in the period from 2003 to 2015. Institutionalized in 2003 as a structuring action of the Zero Hunger Program, the actions of the program allied elements of agricultural policy and food security policy, enabling the articulation between production, marketing and consumption, aiming at collaborating with the fight against hunger and poverty in Brazil and, at the same time, strengthening family farming. To do this, an analysis of the PAA trajectory will be carried out on a national scale, as well as macro-regions (Center-West, Northeast, North, Southeast and South). It is possible to affirm, given the results obtained with the research that, although the resources destined to the program have been significantly expanded, their scope is still limited and concentrated in spatial terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way the researcher groups his research data will influence the result of his work. In the literature, this phenomenon is treated as a Problem of the Modifiable Areal Unit. The objective of this article was to analyze the three spatial levels by Municipalities, Regional Centers and Mesoregions using the following data: gross domestic product, effective agricultural production, grain production and gross value of agricultural production for the state of Paraná-Brazil in the period since 2012 until 2015. The methodological procedure studied data from the Paranaense Institute for Economic and Social Development of the above-named variables collected on the website of the Paranaense Institute for Economic and Social Development of the 399 municipalities, 23 regional centers and 10 mesoregions. The results found show the presence of the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem, presenting different results for each level of grouping. The study revealed the problem of the modifiable areal unit is a relevant occurrence and it should be disregarded by researchers who work with clusters of spatial data in their studies. The results found allow a better understanding of the scale effect and demonstrate the efficiency of spatial analysis in socioeconomic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years, Brazil has made significant progress in reducing hunger and food and nutrition insecurity. By the end of 2009 it had met the first United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty and malnutrition by half, six years ahead of the 2015 deadline. Much of this progress has been achieved through innovative policies and initiatives championed by civil society organisations for over two decades. This paper reviews some of the most important policies and initiatives which are having a beneficial impact on sustainable rural development and food security. Focusing on conditions for small family farmers, the authors describe the main elements of these government programmes as well as relevant civil society initiatives, and the possible lessons to be learned from them. The paper concludes by discussing the challenges the country faces in maintaining recent advances in sustainable rural development and food security. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Brazil has emerged as an agro-export powerhouse: from being a net-agricultural importer and food aid recipient as recently as the 1960s and 1970s, it has now become the world’s third largest agricultural exporter, after the US and EU. What is more, Brazil’s new role as a major agricultural trader has provided an important foundation for its enhanced status and influence in global economic governance, as an emerging power and one of the ‘BRICS’. This paper analyses how such a remarkable transformation was brought about. I argue that Brazil’s emergence as an agricultural powerhouse was the result not of its natural factor endowments, but extensive intervention on the part of the Brazilian state that had the effect of constructing a new comparative advantage. This transformation was propelled by state-driven innovation and related policies that opened up massive new areas of the country to agriculture, enabled it to shift to producing goods in direct competition with the world’s dominant agricultural exporters, and generated significant gains in productivity and competitiveness. The irony is that the intention of these policies, initiated in the 1970s, was to foster industrial development in Brazil as part of its import-substitution industrialisation programme, yet they wound up having precisely the opposite effect – transforming Brazil into one of the world’s dominant agricultural powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC/1995-2002) played a significant role in the consolidation of policies directed to the countryside and the agrarian reform process in Brazil. The aim of this paper was to reflect on the profile and stresses involved in agrarian reform policy of the FHC government, and the ramifications of this policy in light of the number of settled families and areas obtained for agrarian reform in Brazil. It was used as source texts of researchers who studied the ways and waywardness of the Brazilian agrarian reform and data from the "Fight for Land Database" (DATALUTA/NERA/Unesp/Presidente Prudente). It is understood that during the FHC government, despite the number of settled families and obtained areas have considerably advanced when compared to previous governments, agrarian reform was treated marginally, and the government sometimes denied the struggles and the leadership role of social movements in the countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The present paper aims at evaluating the effect of regional policies in the agricultural field. [•] Regional systems are evaluated through the Directional Output Distance Function (DODF). [•] The DODF approach considers pollutant emissions as undesirable output. [•] Results show that there is a link between public policy and environmental performance of agricultural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Without education, land reform is not complete. Was thinking this way that the Movement of Landless Rural Workers proposed and succeeded in institutionalizing a proposal for education in the field, appropriate to the reality of the field. The teaching of the MST preaches that besides the land farmers need a transformation of education, an education does not equal, but different from that practiced in the city and own field outside the world under the direct influence of the movement social. In this paper, the intention is to analyze the pedagogical MST, enhancing their power, their actions and their limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on three case studies in China and Brazil, this paper explores the terms of access for farmers' participation in certified organic agriculture (OA) and investigates the influence of adoption on productivity, nutrient budgets, income and labour use. Small-scale farmers converting to OA require substantial external production-related, marketing and certification support. Access to OA was strongly dependent upon the type of support available to farmers. Organization based on a contract-farming model resulted in OA only being an option available to a narrow group of farmers, whilst OA initiated by a farmer cooperative provided better access. Gross output was significantly higher for oranges, whilst for the other crops gross output was similar. However, organic farmers in China felt that adoption had improved prices, incomes and market access. Farmers' perception of improved incomes is probably due to improved market access coupled with either a large production base, production intensification and production diversification. This study demonstrates that organization of farmers, and the manner in which this is structured, is crucial for external support to have an effect. Thus, OA may be a development path for small farmers if the supporting structures are provided at a small financial interest rate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy: property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands. Moreover, deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters. Landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk. Squatters invade land plots, clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles. A particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the Brazilian context. It is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures. Principal component analysis allows synthesising such information. An econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988¿2000 period and the nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. The hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed. This result questions the modality of the Brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Brazil has involved intense disputes between the three branches of government (legislature, executive and judiciary). This process arose out of a class-action suit that overruled a decision authorizing the commercial release of GM soybeans by the regulatory body. After a seven-year legal ban, the disputes moved into the legislative and executive branches, as two successive federal governments have created ad hoc legal means to overcome the requirements for a precautionary approach to the commercial release of GMOs in Brazil. This paper intends to show that the evolution of the regulatory agency responsible for GMOs reveals a political practice which is not based on commonly agreed rules but rather on regimes of exception, in which the legal system has consistently been violated in the name of governability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experience of market-led agrarian reform (mlar) implementation in Brazil. In doing so, it will also analyse the complexity of the Brazilian agrarian situation, the political struggles around the fight for land and the complexity of political forces involved in the contestation. The article examines the origins, implementation process and outcomes of mlar. The paper also examines the current impasse in resolving the agrarian question in the country especially those related to the strengthening of land property rights at the same time that there are increasing demands for land by social movements, putting into broader context the current political and operational difficulties being encountered by mlar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s was the decade of neoliberalism in Brazil During the successive administrations of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2003), public enterprises were privatized, import tariffs were slashed, regional free-trade markets were established, and fiscal discipline was prioritized in an attempt to control a massive public debt. As his first term progressed, however, Cardoso was forced to respond to the insistent popular demand for reform of the country's inequitable land-tenure structure. The issue became increasingly visible in the 1990s because of the strength of a grassroots social movement, the Movement of Landless Workers (MST). In response to the demands for agrarian reform, the government offered its support for an essentially neoliberal, market-based alternative to state-led distribution—an alternative favored by official development organizations throughout the Third World at this time. In this paper, I argue that the support for a market-led agrarian reform privileged the agrarian elite in Brazil and delegitimated the MST's struggle, not only because it reinforced the elite's claim to land but also because it legitimated the elite's particular interpretation of productivity and property rights. The claims put forward both by the agrarian elite and by the MST members in the southern state of Santa Catarina derive from what can usefully be considered ‘agrarian moral economies’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses recent changes in Brazilian agricultural policies, which are seen as linked to new forms of market intervention emerging at the end of the 1980s. Using an institutionalist approach, particularly with regard to forms of governance, we identify three distinct phases that characterize the development of Brazilian agricultural policy over the last thirty years. First, with the formation and constitution of sectorial interests, the state engaged in a sort of ‘regulatory fury,’ from which modern Brazilian agriculture springs. Later, under the pressure of budgetary difficulties and with the emancipation of relevant social actors, we enter a period of ‘controlled autonomy’ in the different sectors of the agro-industrial complex. Finally, under the conditions of ‘commercial opening,’ the fiscal crisis of the state and the increasing role of foreign capital, decision-making arenas multiply and the state's role in the management of agricultural policy diminishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper questions the widely accepted view according to which distorted factor prices are the main determinant of rural unemployment and under-employment in Brazil. It is argued that more than distorted relative prices, the very limited technological alternatives available, together with the pattern of land ownership and the "urban bias" style of the country's agricultural policies are the main forces behind the introduction of capital-intensive processes in Brazil's more advanced agriculture, and the related problems of labour absorption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institution and constitution building are very much in evidence and continue to lie at the heart of contemporary international governance programmes. The paper explores the underlying limitations of legality and associated institutional frameworks in the light of one of the most significant and, apparently, successful transitions to democracy of recent times, that of Brazil. Against the background of struggles over land, the paper discusses the actions of two leading state institutions specifically charged with implementing the 1988 Constitution, and a social movement, the Landless Workers Movement, which uses mass direct action techniques to demand implementation. Although the study highlights the profound limitations of formal legal processes and institutions, and stresses their socially and politically embedded nature, it also affirms the historical and contemporary significance of the realm of legality in the construction and reproduction of social struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]