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Copyright of Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional is the property of Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Portal de Periodicos Eletronicos Cientificos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper provides new estimates of the extent and economic effects of agricultural policies that provide domestic support or import protection to farmers in countries that compete in the global marketplace with unsubsidised farmers. Analyses earlier this century found that import market access barriers accounted for more than 90 per cent of the global welfare cost of all assistance to farmers, with domestic support measures providing as little as 5 per cent. Since then the share contributed by domestic support has grown greatly in some high‐income and emerging economies, thanks to policy re‐instrumentation. Using the latest version of the GTAP model and database of the global economy, this paper estimates the economic effects of direct farmer subsidies, and of the producer subsidy and consumer tax equivalents of farm trade policies, on farmers in three lightly assisting countries. The estimates adjusted for country size suggest the effects on agricultural exports, net farm income and national economic welfare of such policies are far more adverse for Australia, Brazil and especially New Zealand than for the rest of the world, and that domestic supports abroad are much more important contributors to those losses now than they were at the start of this century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Historia Agraria is the property of Historia Agraria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

Transfers, in the form of subsidies, are a government intervention aimed at boosting economic development. These are provided through various instruments that affect production and trade. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development classifies these instruments into categories from most to least distorting. In its strategy of deregulating the world market, it encourages the use of the latter in agricultural policy. Nonetheless, the effect of this recommendation on the value of agricultural production has been poorly researched. This work assessed the relationship between the amounts of support in different agricultural policy instruments used and the value of the production of subsidized agricultural products (VpS) in Mexico, Brazil, and Chile during the period 1995-2020, through a multiple linear regression model with the stepwise backward elimination procedure. The results show that the transfer items that were relevant to explain the VpS in Mexico were: storage, marketing and other physical infrastructure, support based on area and number of animals, extension services, safety and inspection of agricultural products and institutional infrastructure (p< 0.05), in Brazil they were: research, market prices and education (p< 0.05) and in Chile they were: research, storage, marketing and other physical infrastructure, and farm restructuring (p< 0.05). It should be noted that all instruments with a significant effect on the VpS are classified as less distortive, except for the market price support present in Brazil. [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]

Recent research on forms of integration and interaction of peasants and family farmers in dominant economic systems in developed as well as in developing countries has revealed that such forms generate both productive differentiation and social heterogeneity in rural spaces. Therefore, by understanding the local and regional dynamics of the integration of family farming in economic processes, it is possible to broadly comprehend changes and development in the rural world. An actor-oriented theoretical perspective maintains that the agency of social actors explains not only their capacity to resist but also their capacity to suggest, act, and build alternative rural development projects. Adopting an actor-oriented approach combined with a livelihoods perspective, this paper discusses the emergence of a new set of strategies among small-scale family farmers in southern Brazil. This region is one of the rural areas of Brazil most affected by the changes in the technological basis of production that have occurred since the 1970s. Such strategies involve innovations in the labour and production processes, and a common denominator among such strategies is the search for 'autonomy' in a context of increasing social vulnerability. In this context, farmers have built livelihood diversification strategies (internalisation of resources, pluriactivity, de-commodification, alternative markets), which indicate the emergence of new forms of resistance based on a wide and heterogeneous set of farming practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 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]

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]

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]

Highlights • Food security is a major global challenge of the XXIst century. • Good governance is a key player in reducing poverty and increasing food security. • Family farming, complementary to large-scale farming, is crucial to global food security. Abstract Ensuring food security is one of the main challenges of the 21st century in developing countries. The aim of this study is to analyze how public policies contribute to the strengthening of family farming in order to increase the food security. The study encompasses a literature review of the relations between public policies, family farming and food security and relates them with a review of the main policy framework in Brazil. The results show that the Brazilian policy framework in terms of strategies to strengthen food security is intrinsically focused on family farming and, in fact, these policies contribute to enhancing food security. Thus, family farming, in conjunction with large-scale farming, is crucial to Brazilian and global food security. Even though there are some scientific publications on food security and official reports on the subjects in Brazil, little has been written about family farming as a strategy for public policies to enhance food security in Brazil. Therefore, this paper can potentially contribute to the literature on good governance in terms of agriculture and food security policies by presenting the well succeeded case of Brazil since the early 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This article examines the determinants of the pattern of protection across products in the Brazilian agricultural sector from 1969 to 1989. Three key determinants of policy are explored: interest group pressure, government objectives, and structural change associated with economic crisis and a change in political regime. The principal agricultural policies are analyzed, and nominal protection coefficients (NPCs) and producer subsidy equivalents (PSEs) are calculated. When NPCs are used as the dependent variable, econometric results indicate that interest group characteristics such as group size were an important determinant of the pattern of protection. With PSEs, government efforts to raise tax revenues, generate foreign exchange, and control inflation played a more significant role. The results of this paper suggest that future studies of the political economy of protection should pay more attention to the specification of the dependent variable because the conclusions can depend crucially on this choice. (JEL O13, Q18) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Pesticides are becoming a key topic in critical academic research; they entail substantial negative global impacts on human health and other-than-humans' existences. Even though decades of agroecological research and practice have demonstrated that no pesticides are needed to produce enough food, pesticides are still most typically taken for granted as an indispensable part of food production. In this article, we analyse events and policies through which Brazilian agriculture has become a global hotspot for pesticide consumption in the global agrarian capitalism. We provide an overview of the pesticide legalisation in Brazilian agriculture and discuss the ramifications of recent changes for pesticide-free agriculture. The post-2016 legalisation of pesticides has taken place concomitantly with a quick dismantling of the structures supporting agroecology and protecting the environment. The toxic turn of the Brazilian agriculture is seen in part as a reactionary response to the momentum of agroecology, which removes pesticides from agriculture, that had gained strength under the first Workers' Party regime between 2003 and 2016. A pivotal policy goal for the new Lula government should be an agroecological transformation, which can be justified by politicising pesticide use as a major, multidimensional problem of the 'agribusiness economy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the serious problems involving land regulation in Brazil and stresses the urgent need to solve the country's agrarian issues. The historical background of landholding and land property regulation in Brazil is analyzed in parallel with the overall institutional framework of land regulation. In addition, it interprets the connection between regulation of land use in Brazil and the various social, economic and environmental impacts. After discussion of recent land policies, a new sustainable and participative proposal for municipal land governance is outlined. [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]

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 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]

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]

In Brazil, agriculture has fulfilled its basic functions, being strongly linked to economic dynamics and food security. It has thus contributed to economic growth. In the European Union (EU) agriculture has played a prominent role which, after The Second World War, has unfolded in the formulation of a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which has been mainly based on providing food security. The study is included in this context. It aims to measure the incentives of agricultural policy for cereal production in the Western Mesoregion of Paraná and the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen from 2005 to 2017. This was accomplished through an index, which measured the proportional participation of subsidies in the Gross Value Added (GVA) of agriculture in each region. The results showed that agricultural subsidies for Germany and Nordrhein-Westfalen were on average 29% of GVA. While for Paraná and West Mesoregion the value was around 8%. The result allows us to conclude that agricultural subsidies for the German regions were about three times higher than those of the Brazilian regions, demonstrating high participation of subsidies in the producer's income. [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]

The goal of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of agroecological and conventional small coffee farms. We investigated 15 coffee farms in the East region of Minas Gerais, a Brazilian rural region, based on coffee production using a multicriteria analysis with economic, social and environmental factors. The results suggest that agroecological farms perform better than conventional farms in terms of sustainability, reduce labor intensity and improve income stability and the environmental impact, such as agro-biodiversity and forest cover. In particular, the results reveal that agroecological farms, though they have lower levels of coffee productivity than conventional farms, perform better in terms of income stabilization. This result depends on product diversification (such as agri-food products, vegetables or fruits) for local markets, which reduces farmer risks associated with coffee price volatility, improving both the local economy and local food security. Moreover, agroecological farms rely more on labor than capital. Overall, the results of this study reveal that agroecological systems support the socio-economic sustainability of the rural areas under study and suggest the potential of agroecology to boost sustainable development in the East Region of Minas Gerais. In short, the spread of agroecological systems could improve local employment conditions, reducing migration toward large cities and shanty towns in other parts of Brazil. Hence, agroecology systems can represent the main alternative to conventional production systems to improve the well-being and wealth of rural populations in developing countries. The analysis presented in this study is based on a specific case study, but the rural area under study has many similarities with other areas in Latin America regarding all aspects of economic, social and environmental sustainability. Finally, some agricultural policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate emissions from indirect land‐use change associated with U.S. corn ethanol production by using the updated Center for Agricultural and Rural Development/Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute global agricultural outlook model, which incorporates sub‐national land‐use modeling in Brazil and endogenous crop yield‐price relationships. Emissions estimates range between 9.7–23.9 g CO2 per mega Joule (MJ−1), which is consistent with other estimates. We compare the results of the current model to the 2008 model version. Using the data from the 2016 model in the 2008 model results in emissions that range from 23.2–32.2 g CO2 MJ−1. The addition of detailed modelling in Brazil, for example, double‐cropping, reduced estimates considerably and highlights the importance of continuous improvements in global agricultural models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding irrigated cropping areas is one of Brazil's strategies to increase agricultural production. This expansion is constrained by water policy goals to restrict water scarcity to acceptable levels. We therefore analysed the trade-off between levels of acceptable water scarcity and feasible expansion of irrigation. The appropriateness of water use in agricultural production was assessed in categories ranging from acceptable to very critical based on the river flow that is equalled or exceeded 95 % of the time (Q95) as an indicator for physical water availability. The crop water balance components were determined for 166 842 sub-catchments covering all of Brazil. The crops considered were cotton, rice, sugarcane, bean, cassava, corn, soybean and wheat, together accounting for 96 % of the harvested area of irrigated and rain-fed agriculture. On currently irrigated land irrigation must be discontinued on 54 % (2.3 Mha) for an acceptable water scarcity level, on 45 % (1.9 Mha) for a comfortable water scarcity level and on 35 % (1.5 Mha) for a worrying water scarcity level, in order to avoid critical water scarcity. An expansion of irrigated areas by irrigating all 45.6 Mha of the rain-fed area would strongly impact surface water resources, resulting in 26.0 Mha experiencing critical and very critical water scarcity. The results show in a spatially differentiated manner that potential future decisions regarding expanding irrigated cropping areas in Brazil must, while pursuing to intensify production practices, consider the likely regional effects on water scarcity levels, in order to reach sustainable agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an unexplored data set on disasters in Brazil, the current study shows that the direct damage of natural disasters reduces the GDP growth rate of municipal economies in Ceará state, Northeast Brazil. The agriculture and service sectors are the most affected economic sectors, while the industrial sector remains unaffected by environmental shocks. Economic growth is particularly responsive to the occurrence of large natural disasters that lead municipalities to declare a state of emergency or public calamity. Regarding public policies, water supply infrastructure increases the resilience of the output growth of services to droughts, whereas disaster microinsurance helps to mitigate the effects of droughts and floods on the economic growth of agriculture in a Brazilian state where family farming is predominant and highly vulnerable to natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recommendations accompanying pesticide derogations from the FSC are not efficient for the management of leaf-cutting ants and termites in certified forest plantations in Brazil compared with chemical control using insecticides. FSC recommendations ignore the biological and ecological features of pests and forest plantations in Brazil when they set global rules for forest certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Routledge) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on the collaboration between the Brazilian government and the agribusiness sector in Brazil, with regards to negotiations and dispute settlement at the World Trade Organization. Topics discussed include the theory of dependent development on changes in state-business relations; role played by export trade of agricultural products in its economic development and reliance of import-substitution industrialization policies on foreign direct investment and international firms.

Direct action land reform (DALR) and settlement formation are new drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. However, until now no research has paid attention to fragmentation patterns and the social processes that lead to them. This article analyzes two types of settlements, spontaneous and social movement organization-led settlements. The study uses neutral landscape models (NLMs) to compare simulated landscapes with the real fragmentation patterns found in DALR settlements. In sequence, the article uses landscape metrics to analyze the temporal and spatial dynamics of fragmentation patterns in these two types of DALR settlements. Results showed that there are significant differences between real landscape patterns and simulated landscapes using NLMs. In other words, human interferences did play a significant role in shaping deforestation patches in DALR settlements. Our metric results revealed a process in which deforestation patch mean area, shape complexity, and physical connectedness increase over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazil's economic strategy has shifted hesitatingly during the last several decades from one of producer protection to trade competitiveness. Exploiting the variations these shifts have afforded, we use a sequence of decennial agricultural censuses to examine Brazilian policy implications for agricultural competitiveness and efficiency. Total factor productivity is decomposed into best-technology and efficiency elements, each subject to policy influence. We find technology growth, at 4.5% per annum, to have been extraordinarily high, particularly in the south. But because productivity among average producers has fallen rapidly behind that on the technical frontier, total productivity growth has been a much more modest 2.6% per year. Public agricultural research programs most benefit the country's technological leaders, widening the gap between frontier and average producer. Credit, education, and road construction policies instead narrow that gap. Credit and road programs especially enhance efficiency in the south, where efficiency losses have been greatest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biofuel project is an agro-industrial development and politically contested policy process where governments increasingly become global actors. European Union (EU) biofuels policy rests upon arguments about societal benefits of three main kinds - namely, environmental protection (especially greenhouse gas savings), energy security and rural development, especially in the global South. Each argument involves optimistic assumptions about what the putative benefits mean and how they can be fulfilled. After examining those assumptions, we compare them with experiences in three countries - Germany, Brazil and Mozambique - which have various links to each other and to the EU through biofuels. In those case studies, there are fundamental contradictions between EU policy assumptions and practices in the real world, involving frictional encounters among biofuel promoters as well as with people adversely affected. Such contradictions may intensify with the future rise of biofuels and so warrant systematic attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Brazil, one of the most pressing issues for environmental justice scholars (and movements) is unequal access to land. Over the past 20 years, people have mobilized collectively to demand both access to resources (distributional equity) and the right to participate in decisions over their distribution (procedural equity). In this article, I analyze the recent development of large-scale soybean production in the Brazilian cerrado. I argue that distributional inequities in the cerrado have been produced through a state-led process of development that favored large farms and modern, agro-industrial development. Popular discourse, however, fetishizes the efficiencies that accrue to large-scale agriculture, naturalizing the comparative advantage of wealthy farmers and erasing the importance of the state and geopolitical context for development in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study of the role of nonagricultural benefits of landholding in rural organizations and land reform in Brazil. The study indicates that a nonagricultural motive of landholding in a case of financial control yields a possible mismatch between the distribution of land and the distribution of farming abilities. It provides evidence that such inefficiency is a result of the way that the land rental market fails to operate. It goes to show that land reform programs should deal with inadequate farmers instead of landless people as they offer better farming skills, which can lead to a significant outcome by enhancing land use and increasing aggregate agricultural production in improvements in the land rental markets.

The potential impacts of multilateral trade liberalisation on developing countries are the subject of numerous controversies. One particular concern is that Brazil, a major agricultural exporter and a country with one of the world's most unequal income distributions, will reap a substantial share of the potential benefits to developing countries from agricultural trade reform, and that most of those benefits will go to large-scale commercial farmers rather than to the country's smallholders. This claim is explored via a global general equilibrium model and a national model of Brazil containing multiple agricultural and non-agricultural households. Brazil is found to account for nearly one-half of all the benefits to developing countries deriving from global agricultural trade reform. These gains are associated with improvements in the welfare of each group and a lower incidence of poverty. Large-scale producers gain more than smallholders as they tend to be relatively specialised in export products, but there are important gains to agricultural employees, who are relatively poor, and to urban households, who benefit from the expansion of the agro-food sector. Overall, there is no discernible impact on income inequality, and no evidence that the gains to commercial farmers occur at the expense of poorer households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that an adequate appreciation of land redistribution in Brazil must transcend the debate about the number of beneficiaries. Need to place the reform in the larger context of state policies toward land and agriculture; Extent such policies under Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso represented the dismantling of past state practices in the countryside; Enactment of some democratizing changes under the Cardoso administration.

Discusses the problems and prospects of food supply in Brazil. Performance of livestock sector; Consequences of interregional differences in land tenure arrangements; Average income of farm-operator families; Public agricultural and industrialization policy.