ABSTRACT

Due to new production areas and persistent productivity gains, Brazil has consolidated its position as a global leader and even as a ‘model’ of commercial, integrated crop production. The country is now seen as an agricultural powerhouse that has a lot to offer in terms of reducing the prospect of a looming, increasingly global, food crisis.

Agribusiness and the Neoliberal Food System in Brazil focuses on the intensification of Brazilian agribusiness as a privileged entry point into the politicised geography of globalised agri-food. Drawing on rich empirical analysis based around three fieldwork campaigns in the state of Mato Grosso, the book examines the connections between farming, markets and the apparatus of the state. The importance of agribusiness expansion within the wider politico-economic context of Brazilian neoliberalism is demonstrated, thus drawing broader conclusions about the main trends of agribusiness in the world today and providing recommendations for future research.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of agribusiness, neoliberalism and global food production, as well as those interested in Brazil and Latin America more generally.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction

Titanic agriculture or agriculture-titanic?

chapter |29 pages

The political ecology of agri-food systems

From agriculture to agribusiness

chapter |29 pages

Realising agro-neoliberalism in Brazil

Agriculture, capitalism and agro-neoliberalism

chapter |35 pages

Push and hold the agribusiness frontier

Antecedents of agribusiness in Mato Grosso

chapter |27 pages

The rent of agribusiness

chapter |35 pages

Displacement, replacement and misplacement

Placing Mato Grosso’s agribusiness frontier

chapter |22 pages

Poverty in rich Amazonian ecosystems

The poverty-making geography of development

chapter |15 pages

Conclusions

Fields of empty grains