ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to analyze how aggressive land grabbing practices and institutions define an order that has profound implications for the functioning of contemporary agrifood systems. It demonstrates not only those practices subsisted, but also the crises of the industrial model made room both for the emergence of civic, aesthetic and financial orders, and even for the reinvention of “preindustrial” practices and institutions. The conception of export monoculture as the mainstay of Brazilian economic formation has been widely criticized by historiography. Highlighting the endogenous processes of capitalist accumulation, several authors have challenged the view of exporting latifundia as an almost exclusive underpinning of the colonial economy. A common criticism against neoextractivism is related to the “paradox of plenty”, a trendy idea in the 1980s, according to which plentiful natural resources produce economic and political distortions that hamper the development of a country. The conception of export monoculture as the mainstay of Brazilian economic formation has been widely criticized by historiography.
