SOY AND DEVELOPMENTALIST PERCEPTIONS - THE EVOLUTION OF EXPORT-ORIENTED AGRICULTURE AND THE GROWTH OF SOY THROUGH STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE BRAZILIAN STATE

Abstract

Résumé The goal within the following article is to understand how the soy sector, as part of export-oriented agriculture, has evolved through the different developmental stages in the Brazilian economic history of the 20 th and early 21 st century, and how the country´s shifting insertion into the global market has positioned interests linked to this sector, in relation the political hegemony of the day. The pragmatic nature of the policies addressing export agriculture is initially traced from the early developmentalism, through the birth of soy cultivation in the latter half of the century, towards the day today, when this single crop has come to hold an extremely significant position within Brazilian exports; a position which has had strong repercussions within the political sphere. A strong emphasis is laid upon the structural transformation of the Brazilian economy in the 1990´s and the new panorama which its internationalization has created for the growth of the soy sector, both during the Cardoso and the Lula administration. Different developmentalist visions, both in their historical conceptualizations and in their presence within the contemporary political scenario through a neo-developmentalist orientation, are synthesized with significant developments within export-agriculture, in order to understand how they in praxis have come to concede a favorable political positioning of rural bourgeoisie. It thereby assumes the character of a historical analysis of the political economy of agricultural policies, with a particular focus upon the evolution of the soy sector. The article concludes that Brazils historical positioning within the global economic scenario, has at the most, made it possible to mitigate the political influence of export-agriculture, which has been a constantly significant factor, restricting the possibilities for social inclusion of destitute rural segments and exacerbating the sub-ordinate positioning as a raw material exporter. The “long perspective” which this paper operates with, derives from the perception of the need to understand the profound development, which the soy expansion in Brazil during recent decades has constituted, by tracing the policies affecting the sector below the imperatives posed by the structural transformations of the Brazilian economy.