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The article analyzes the interrelationships between international commodity markets and food security in Brazil. Through bibliographical research, document analysis, and data visualization, this paper illustrates the key connections between the dynamics of agricultural commodity markets, the growth of commodity production in Brazil, and the behavior of food prices in Brazil. Greater integration of the Brazilian food market with the global food market not only raises land use and environmental concerns, but also requires a discussion of development strategies that can ensure national food. The paper's conclusion emphasizes the need for greater understanding of the ongoing dynamics and their local effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 14 months of ethnographic research, this paper analyzes soil management within the plantation model of farmingin order to understand the extent to which life on large-scale monocultural farms can be controlled and directed toward extractiveproduction. Transnational soy farmers in Western Bahia Brazil 'correct' soils in the region to make them productive and marshal thisagronomic work to claim that they have added value to the land by 'building it up'. Still, the permeability of the plantation keepstransnational farmers from achieving their dreams of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the importance of reciprocity in the processes and procedures recorded in the management of common resources. First, it examines the role that Elinor Ostrom attributes to the norm of reciprocity in her approach to common property resources. Second, it interprets economic and social relationships in the management of common resources as seen by Francophone economic anthropology's theory of reciprocity. The argument relies on the application of these two theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of common resources management systems in the Northeast of Brazil and in New Caledonia. The conclusion attempts to establish a dialogue between Ostrom's proposals and the theory of reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo-extractivism in Latin America increased state revenues and expanded its capacity for income redistribution while leaving a trail of socioecological devastation. The ambiguity of twenty-first-century extractivism reflects the lack of consensus about its role in the successes and failures of the Pink Tide. Theorization about the main phenomenon, extractivism, could lead to a more assertive examination of both. This paper offers an analysis of Brazil during this period, departing from an understanding that the key to depicting extractivism is not the link between resource extraction and the dynamics of profit or revenue generation, but rather, the link of both to a porous and externally dependent pattern of domestic accumulation. As such, neoliberal extractivism describes empirically and theoretically the recent form of extractivism in Brazil. The expansion and reproduction of resource-based accumulation reflected and reinforced the reliance on a systematic spoliation of state and society to remunerate the owners of rent- and interest-bearing assets – the most perverse and aggressive form of extractivism in its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contradictions between impressive levels of economic growth and the persistence of poverty and inequality are perhaps nowhere more evident than in rural Brazil. While Brazil might appear to be an example of the potential harmony between large-scale, export-oriented agribusiness and small-scale family farming, high levels of rural resistance contradict this vision. In this introductory paper, we synthesize the literature on agrarian resistance in Brazil and situate recent struggles in Brazil within the Latin American context more broadly. We highlight seven key characteristics of contemporary Latin American resistance, which include: the growth of international networks, the changing structure of state–society collaboration, the deepening of territorial claims, the importance of autonomy, the development of alternative economies, continued opposition to dispossession, and struggles over the meaning of nature. We argue that by analyzing rural mobilization in Brazil, this collection offers a range of insights relevant to rural contention globally. Each contribution in this collection increases our understanding of alternative agricultural production, large-scale development projects, education, race and political parties in the contemporary agrarian context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This contribution examines how and with what effects the Movement of People Threatened by Dams (MOAB) in the Ribeira Valley, Brazil, works at various scales simultaneously. It is argued that MOAB was kicked off by mobilising Afro-descendants around livelihood issues, and that one of the first anti-dam strategies was to claim quilombola recognition and land rights at the state level. MOAB soon expanded its network and broadened its agenda to include procedural justice, targeting federal and international agencies for recourse. The paper concludes that MOAB has successfully used different scales for framing, mobilisation and action, which has contributed to the dam project being put on hold for almost three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interviews with Indian and Brazilian farmers’ rights activists, lawyers, agronomists and plant breeders, this article aims at better understanding how farmers’ rights are protected on paper and implemented on the ground in these two countries. Brazil and India offer important case studies because they are biologically megadiverse countries, and because small farmers represent an important segment of the rural economy. In this article, I show that India has adopted an ownership approach to farmers’ rights, while Brazil leans towards a stewardship approach. Based on an examination of the progress made in enforcing these rights, I further argue that the stewardship model adopted by Brazil is more conducive to the realization of farmers’ rights, and I explore why this is the case. Finally, I show how farmers’ rights provisions in the Brazilian and Indian legislations represent fragile gains that could be curtailed by several bills currently under discussion in the field of seed and plant variety protection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dominant conceptions of social movements consider their constitutive feature thedisruptionof order, not practices aroundbuildingit. In this paper, I challenge this notion by analyzing the Landless Workers' Movement (MST)'s relatively successful efforts toinstitutionalizethe practices of agricultural production developed by its members in cooperatives and agroecology. Through this analysis, I show that the movement's administration of a democratically managed form of agricultural production exemplifies a unique form of social movement resistance – namely, what I callself-governmentalresistance.Rather than reformist or revolutionary contention, self-governmental resistance – performed by movements like the MST –redevelopsstate policies by vying for and often taking control over the design and implementation of agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent global rush for farmland in Latin America has produced a dramatic increase in the level of foreign investment in land in Brazil. The current trend accentuates the ongoing process of foreignization of agriculture associated with the production of grains, sugar, ethanol and other commodities, increasing land prices. In response, the Brazilian government reestablished a legal mechanism for ‘controlling’ land-based foreign investment which has proven neither efficient nor effective in solving land concentration. This paper examines this issue by analyzing the causes of the increase in investment as well as the consequences of this process with respect to land prices, critically situating land-based investments and the government's policy response in a broader discussion of the demands of agrarian social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the competing claims on land use resulting from the expansion of biofuel production. Sugarcane for biofuel drives agrarian change in Sao Paulo state, which has become the major ethanol-producing region in Brazil. We analyse how the expansion of sugarcane-based ethanol in Sao Paulo state has impacted dairy and beef production. Historical changes in land use, production technologies, and product and land prices are described, as well as how these are linked to changing policies in Brazil. We argue that sugarcane/biofuel expansion should be understood in the context of the dynamics of other agricultural sectors and the long-term national political economy rather than as solely due to recent global demand for biofuel. This argument is based on a meticulous analysis of changes in three important sectors - sugarcane, dairy farming, and beef production - and the mutual interactions between these sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New alliances between Brazil and the US for ethanol production, transport, and trade are revitalising and expanding the centuries-old sugarcane plantation system in the Americas. In this paper I adopt the concept of global assemblages, building on the work of Aihwa Ong, Stephen Collier, and Saskia Sassen, to draw the contours of an 'ethanol assemblage', which includes states, corporations, growers, technologies, urban consumers, and rural communities and landscapes. Though important to conceptualise agrofuels as a global phenomenon, it is also necessary to recognise the distinct regional patterns that cohere around various aspects of this polymorphous industry. Therefore, I focus on alliances around sugarcane ethanol, paying particular attention to the role of Miami as a global city serving as a gateway to information, investment, and commodities for the public/private and national/transnational entities that are engaged in the hemispheric project of ethanol promotion, production and distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing literature on the experiences of participatory democracy in Latin America. Largely focused on urban areas and municipal service provision, the literature provides important lessons as to whether, how, and why participation works to improve the quality of democracy. In this paper, I examine an unlikely case of participatory democracy: the struggle for land reform in the Brazilian countryside. Analysing the relationships between the federal agency in charge of land reform in Brazil (the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform) and the largest grassroots social movement organised to fight for the distribution of land (the Landless Movement) provides evidence of participatory democracy by default rather than by design: government officials who lack the resources and technical capacity to carry out reform are forced to rely on social movement actors who demand attention by routinely transgressing at the margins of acceptable (and legal) behaviour. At the same time, the features of political life in Brazil that allow or force the Landless Movement to collaborate with the state make it difficult for individual settlers to do so. For those individuals who do not feel adequately represented by the movement and attempt to be included on their own, the political system and culture continue to privilege the most powerful, thereby reinforcing prior settlement inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture has been a key issue of North-South struggle at the WTO. Emerging powers like China, India and Brazil have portrayed themselves as leaders of the Global South, crusading to make the trading system fairer for developing countries. This article analyzes three cases – the cotton dispute, subsidies and public stockholding – that have been at the center of WTO negotiations and dispute settlement on agriculture since the collapse of the Doha Round. While presenting themselves as champions of the developing world, I show that the emerging powers have been advancing their own interests, often at the expense of other developing countries.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agroecological practices have been widely promoted as an alternative to the hegemonic agri-food system, yet they also can help to 'green' the system. To strengthen a transformative agroecology, Latin American activists have promoted the concept desenvolvimento territorial rural (DTR or rural territorial development), which has different versions. The dominant version advocates broad multi-actor coalitions to strengthen DTR and thus benefit poor people, yet this obscures rival territorial agendas. An antagonistic version instead analyses how capital accumulation drives societal conflicts, contingently resulting in DTR trajectories. Here an analytical schema helps identify how agroecological practices are appropriated for diverse trajectories of territorial development, illustrated by Brazilian agroforestry case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin American and Brazilian rural social movements believe that significant social transformation requires the collective construction of a political project of an historical character. Education is conceived as an historical–cultural and political project to transform the peasantry into an historical subject through emancipatory educational–pedagogical praxis. The Landless Workers Movement (MST), the most emblematic peasant movement in Brazil, has played the leading role in this debate, which also includes many other peasant organizations. The MST has identified education as the key element in forging an historical–political actor out of the landless peasantry. This is articulated through the struggle for education for rural peoples, and along a theoretical–epistemic axis that revolves around the emergent concept ofEducação do Campo(‘Education for and by the Countryside’). I ask how the MST conceptualizes education, and what the role is of education in strengthening peasant resistance and sharpening the dispute between political projects for the countryside. I focus on the epistemic dimensions of the concepts of education and pedagogy in the trajectory of the MST in Brazil, and I examineEducação do Campoas an educational-political project and in terms of policy conquests in the political dispute between the rival political projects for the Brazilian countryside of peasants and capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This contribution uses the case of Brazil's largest infrastructure project, the Belo Monte hydroelectric facility, to examine the challenges and opportunities for resistance and claims-making in the face of contemporary development projects. It shows that the confluence of the privatized nature of hydroelectric projects and the government's purported commitment to democratic, participatory development has impacts. I argue that this context, on the one hand, contributes to the fracturing of civil society. On the other hand, it presents opportunities for the creation of surprising alliances among diverse resistance groups and the state. I further argue that direct acts of resistance in this context can encourage the state to work for the public good. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies of Brazil's agricultural labor movement have generally neglected its relationship to the struggle for land, but this is neither fair nor accurate. Analyzing the rural labor movement's historical contributions to the land struggle in Brazil, this contribution has been organized into three main periods, emphasizing social relations, institutional activism and policy changes. It argues that despite the peculiarities of different historical contexts, rural labor consistently provoked protest against policies that privileged large landholders, whose concentration of power over land and labor resources continually worsened Brazil's ranking as one of the most unequal of nations. For more than half a century, the most constant opponent of this situation among the peasantry has been the National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture (CONTAG), a corporatist organization of rural labor unions founded in 1963. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This contribution draws on Nancy Fraser's concept of ‘participatory parity’ to analyze the reproduction and contestation of inequalities internal to land reform settlements affiliated with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) located in the cacao lands of southern Bahia, Brazil. These inequalities are variously manifest in unequal control over land and legal documents, disparities in status and what Fraser calls ‘voice'. These circumstances help account for quantitative evidence that shows a strong preference among local landless populations for land reform organizations that are more decentralized and less hierarchically organized. These circumstances also motivate direct actions undertaken by grassroots MST settlers seeking to destabilize the conditions that ground these inequalities. This research highlights the importance of attending to local histories and interactions through which participatory disparities are christened and reproduced; indicates potential methodological consequences; and examines the interplay of transgressive action, dialogue and recognition as settlers struggle to bring about ‘participatory parity' – or what they might call genuine ‘friendships' – in their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article compares the main findings of Brazilian agricultural census data of 1996 with the same of 2006 by applying the methodology known as ‘FAO/INCRA’ (Food Agriculture Organization/Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária) which allows the characterization of family farms in relation to the total universe of farms. In this comparison several variables are shown, including the share of family farming in the total value of production, in the total number of farms, utilization of modern technology and partial factor productivity. Census data shows that family farming has changed from 37.91 percent of total production value to 36.11 percent during a decade of strong expansion of agriculture as a whole, demonstrating the economic relevance of this segment which, besides producing food, is integrated in the most important productive agricultural chains of the Brazilian agribusiness. Family farming is a heterogeneous segment, with different sub-segments. During the studied period of ten years the most rich of these sub-segments (A) has increased participation in total production, while the poorer sub-segments (C and D) have only grown in absolute terms without a corresponding increase in production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]