Agribusiness and Family Farming in Brazil: Competing Modes of Agricultural Production

Abstract

Brazil has become one of the largest exporting countries of soya, sugarcane, maize, oranges and coffee for the global market. The export-oriented agribusiness model is embedded into a neo-extractivist development model, where state revenues are largely based on exports of primary products from agriculture and mining. While export crops are mainly produced by large-scale agribusiness, traditional staple crops such as cassava, rice or beans, which still provide an important contribution to the diets of Brazilians, continue to be produced by small-scale family farming. The concurrence of both farming modes and the commodification of new land for the production of export crops potentially lead to competition for resources and markets, thus reinforcing the strong inequality in landownership in Brazil. Based on arguments from the scientific literature and empirical data, I explore this potentially competitive process, based on land-use expansion patterns for soya and sugarcane (agribusiness), and cassava and beans (family farming). While processes of competition cannot be directly inferred from this analysis, it provides insights into hot spots of dynamic changes in land use and informs local case studies, which are required to deepen the understanding of possible land-use competition.