IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ssefpa/v7y2015i6p1165-1174.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond the dualities: a nuanced understanding of Brazilian soybean producers

Author

Listed:
  • Vanessa Empinotti

Abstract

Brazil has become one of the main agricultural commodity and food exporters in the world and countries of the Middle East are part of its consumer market. On the other hand, the increasing demand coming from these countries impacts the type of farming practices and categories taking place in Brazil. In many cases, commodity production is associated with the agribusiness model, criticized for its social and environmental costs. In this context, it is important to unveil who are responsible for production of commodities and what is behind the concept of agribusiness farming in Brazil. This paper aims at describing and discussing a more nuanced and multifaceted notion of soybean producers in the light of an empirical study conducted in Canarana at the Upper Xingu river basin, in the state of Mato Grosso. Land tenure, scale, and production models contribute to defining the farming categories in place. In this particular region, medium size farms prevail over large ones as a consequence of the type of colonization of the land as well as for historical reasons. This work suggests that, to understand the social dynamics taking place at an agricultural frontier, one has to break from the dichotomies that separate groups on opposite sides and recognize the heterogeneity that comprises farming categories in a food-export country, such as Brazil. This understanding will thus help to identify and formulate future public policies and strategies that can contribute to ensuring food availability as well as good quality of both life and the environment in an increasingly interconnected world. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and International Society for Plant Pathology 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Vanessa Empinotti, 2015. "Beyond the dualities: a nuanced understanding of Brazilian soybean producers," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 7(6), pages 1165-1174, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ssefpa:v:7:y:2015:i:6:p:1165-1174
    DOI: 10.1007/s12571-015-0504-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s12571-015-0504-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12571-015-0504-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven M. Helfand & Gervásio Castro de Rezende, 2004. "The Impact of Sector‐Specific and Economy‐Wide Policy Reforms on the Agricultural Sector in Brazil: 1980–98," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(2), pages 194-212, April.
    2. Wendy Wolford, 2005. "Agrarian Moral Economies and Neoliberalism in Brazil: Competing Worldviews and the State in the Struggle for Land," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(2), pages 241-261, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ramon Felipe Bicudo da Silva & Mateus Batistella & James D. A. Millington & Emilio Moran & Luiz A. Martinelli & Yue Dou & Jianguo Liu, 2020. "Three Decades of Changes in Brazilian Municipalities and Their Food Production Systems," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-17, October.
    2. Eckart Woertz & Martin Keulertz, 2015. "Food trade relations of the Middle East and North Africa with tropical countries," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 7(6), pages 1101-1111, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ghinoi, Stefano & Wesz Junior, Valdemar João & Piras, Simone, 2018. "Political debates and agricultural policies: Discourse coalitions behind the creation of Brazil’s Pronaf," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 68-80.
    2. Castro, P. & Pedroso, R. & Lautenbach, S. & Vicens, R., 2020. "Farmland abandonment in Rio de Janeiro: Underlying and contributory causes of an announced development," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    3. Pearce, David, 2005. "Review of ACIAR's Research on Agricultural Policy," Impact Assessment Series (IAS) 113220, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.
    4. Carlos Ludena, 2010. "Agricultural Productivity Growth, Efficiency Change and Technical Progress in Latin America and the Caribbean," Research Department Publications 4675, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    5. Molly Scott Cato & Peter North, 2016. "Rethinking the Factors of Production for a World of Common Ownership and Sustainability," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 48(1), pages 36-52, March.
    6. Sriniketh Nagavarapu, 2008. "Brazilian Ethanol: A Gift or Threat to the Environment and Regional Development?," Discussion Papers 07-039, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    7. Evans, Alice, 2018. "Politicising inequality: The power of ideas," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 360-372.
    8. Kevin A Gould, 2014. "Everyday Expertise: Land Regularization and the Conditions for Land Grabs in Petén, Guatemala," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(10), pages 2353-2368, October.
    9. Cabral, Lídia & Favareto, Arilson & Mukwereza, Langton & Amanor, Kojo, 2016. "Brazil’s Agricultural Politics in Africa: More Food International and the Disputed Meanings of “Family Farming”," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 47-60.
    10. Peter Richards, 2018. "It’s not just where you farm; it’s whether your neighbor does too. How agglomeration economies are shaping new agricultural landscapes," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 87-110.
    11. Robin Roff, 2007. "Shopping for change? Neoliberalizing activism and the limits to eating non-GMO," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 24(4), pages 511-522, December.
    12. Noel Castree, 2008. "Neoliberalising Nature: Processes, Effects, and Evaluations," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 40(1), pages 153-173, January.
    13. Sarah A Radcliffe, 2005. "Neoliberalism as We Know it, but not in Conditions of its Own Choosing: A Commentary," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(2), pages 323-329, February.
    14. Lídia Cabral & Poonam Pandey & Xiuli Xu, 2022. "Epic narratives of the Green Revolution in Brazil, China, and India," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(1), pages 249-267, March.
    15. Richards, Peter D., 2012. "Exchange Rates, Soybean Supply Response, and Deforestation in South America," Graduate Research Master's Degree Plan B Papers 138606, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    16. Leigh Johnson & Tahira Shariff Mohamed & Ian Scoones & Masresha Taye, 2023. "Uncertainty in the drylands: Rethinking in/formal insurance from pastoral East Africa," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(8), pages 1928-1950, November.
    17. Johanna Wadsley, 2020. "‘God was a rotten plumber’: Common sense, moral economy and ‘financing water for all’," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(4), pages 674-692, June.
    18. J Miguel Kanai & Rafael da Silva Oliveira, 2014. "Paving (through) Amazonia: Neoliberal Urbanism and the Reperipheralization of Roraima," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(1), pages 62-77, January.
    19. Fitz, Dylan, 2018. "Evaluating the impact of market-assisted land reform in Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 255-267.
    20. Brooks, Jonathan & Melyukhina, Olga, 2003. "The Effects of Agricultural Policy Reform on Poverty in Brazil," Policy Reform and Adjustment Workshop, October 23-25, 2003, Imperial College London, Wye Campus 15752, International Agricultural Policy Reform and Adjustment Project (IAPRAP).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:ssefpa:v:7:y:2015:i:6:p:1165-1174. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.