ABSTRACT
In Brazilian agriculture, dualism is commonly understood as the coexistence of family farming and agribusiness, two competing agricultural development paradigms. This chapter highlights analytical and practical challenges posed by the binary in researching South –South cooperation, and discusses the role of the binary opposition in the political construction of the field of development cooperation in Brazil. It argues that the binary obfuscates difference and other battles at the receiving end of the South –South interaction. The family farming/agribusiness dualism is one of the most salient features of Brazil’s agrarian politics and one that was, until recently, represented in the very structure of government, in which a family farming ministry existed alongside an agribusiness ministry. Governance structures directly reflected dualism, with the coexistence of two agricultural ministries – the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply supporting agribusiness and the Ministry of Agrarian Development supporting family farmers and overseeing land reform.
