ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the case of Brazil to show how its recent development experience both confirms and defies the expectations of Prebisch's theory. For Brazil, the rapid expansion of its agribusiness exports contributed to fostering macroeconomic stability, fuelling high rates of economic growth and boosting government revenues, which in turn made possible redistributive policies that produced significant gains in reducing poverty and inequality. Prebisch, like many others, saw agriculture as a backwards and declining sector in the global political economy. Brazil's agricultural exports are directly tapping into and benefiting from rising incomes and growing demand across much of the developing world, a result of the massive shift in global economic activity from the global North to the global South currently underway in the global political economy. In the 1970s, the Brazilian state began an effort to modernize agriculture in support of its ISI programme.
