ABSTRACT
Brazil is a country with one of the largest areas of arable farmland in the world. However, it has one of the highest rates of concentration of land ownership and cases of land-focused conflict, both in urban and rural areas. This chapter analyses the key issue of land distribution and the agrarian situation in Brazil through the lens of land governance, positing that the country requires more than agrarian reform, as has been historically demanded by social movements. The land-ownership problem in Brazil persists even in the twenty-first century. The land ownership situation in Brazil, with its disputes over land in both the countryside and cities, the concentration of land ownership, land speculation, fraud and deforestation, goes unscathed and the main policy implemented to curb the problems was agrarian reform.
