Unequal coexistence in the North eastern Cerrado

The municipality of Correntina (Bahia State, Brazil) was long populated by family farmers raising crops in the valleys and transhumant cattle on the plateaus. Since the 1970s, entrepreneurial agriculture has gradually taken over these plateaus. This article aims to study, from a coexistence-based perspective, the links between these two agrarian worlds (opportunity for wage labor, competition for land and irrigation water) which strongly influence agriculture in the valleys. Despite equivalent economic productivity per hectare, due to capital intensification for some and labor intensification for others, a gap in terms of agricultural income now separates the farms on the plateau from those in the valleys.