Sérgio Sauer

Agrarian structure, foreign investment in land, and land prices in Brazil

The recent global rush for farmland in Latin America has produced a dramatic increase in the level of foreign investment in land in Brazil. The current trend accentuates the ongoing process of foreignization of agriculture associated with the production of grains, sugar, ethanol and other commodities, increasing land prices. In response, the Brazilian government reestablished a legal mechanism for ‘controlling’ land-based foreign investment which has proven neither efficient nor effective in solving land concentration. This paper examines this issue by analyzing the causes of the increase in investment as well as the consequences of this process with respect to land prices, critically situating land-based investments and the governments policy response in a broader discussion of the demands of agrarian social movements.

The political economy of sugarcane flexing: initial insights from Brazil, Southern Africa and Cambodia

In the context of rising resource demand, agricultural crops such as sugarcane are being promoted for their multiple uses in different commodity markets and as alternatives to fossil fuel equivalents (i.e. as a source of biofuel, bioelectricity and bioplastic). These commodities are also produced on an increasingly flexible basis, as sugarcane mills respond to price signals and switch between different crop uses. This paper offers a preliminary exploration into the politics of this latest development in the capitalist industrialization of agriculture. It does so by focusing primarily on flexing in Brazil and highlighting the role of the state in both creating markets for non-food products that sugarcane mills can now switch between and managing the tensions that arise from this. These tensions have concerned consumer prices for fuel, control of distribution infrastructure and conditions of land conversion, each prompting political interventions by the state. The paper then suggests how this same process is taking place, albeit shaped by different contexts, in Southern Africa and Cambodia. It concludes with some key questions for further research: is flexing eroding the distinction between crop regimes? How do primary processors decide what their product mix will be? And on what basis do state actors support flexing between agricultural products and investments in so-called bio-refineries?

Expansão agrícola, preços e apropriação de terra por estrangeiros no Brasil

The recent “rush for farmland” in the world has made of Latin America and Brazil targets in the process of land deals with a great increase of foreign investments on the agribusiness including land purchases by financial companies, among others. Despite the low liquidity, land deals and foreign investments in agribusiness are not new in Brazil, but have increased considerably after 2002, as it is possible to be seenin the registration system of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform. According to some field researches, most of the recent investments are related to production of grains (especially soybean) and sugarcane (to produce sugar and ethanol), but also for mining,resulting, among other consequences, in a great increase of land prices in some Brazilian regions.Such rush for land has led the Brazilian government to reestablish a legal mechanism to “control” these foreign investments in land deals. This article discussesthe recent process of foreign investments in purchasing land in Brazil, focusing inmain causes for such investments and its consequences, including possible influences on land prices and social and political impacts over disputes to access land in Brazil.

Código Florestal, função socioambiental da terra e soberania alimentar

This paper aims at discussing the modifications in the Forest Code, especially the proposals of changes in the concepts of Legal Reserve and Permanent Preservation Area (PPA), which undergo a rediscussion process in the House of Representatives, after a presidential enactment with vetoes in the text approved in the House of Representatives on 25 April 2012. To fill in the gaps of the new Law, the Executive Branch edited the first Provisional Measure (PM) 571/2012, which resumes the discussion of the subject. Both the provisions of the New Law and the modifications proposed to the MP text generate food insecurity and aim at eliminating the socioenvironmental function of the earth. The motivation of changes is not related to environmental sustainability or to climatic changes, key issues in the international agenda, but rather to the principle that nature is an obstacle to development. This paper recovers the major modifications in the Forest Code related to the Legal Reserve and to the PPAs, establishing relations (negative impacts) with the socioenvironmental function of the earth and food sovereignty.

Rural unions and the struggle for land in Brazil

Studies of Brazils agricultural labor movement have generally neglected its relationship to the struggle for land, but this is neither fair nor accurate. Analyzing the rural labor movements historical contributions to the land struggle in Brazil, this contribution has been organized into three main periods, emphasizing social relations, institutional activism and policy changes. It argues that despite the peculiarities of different historical contexts, rural labor consistently provoked protest against policies that privileged large landholders, whose concentration of power over land and labor resources continually worsened Brazils ranking as one of the most unequal of nations. For more than half a century, the most constant opponent of this situation among the peasantry has been the National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture (CONTAG), a corporatist organization of rural labor unions founded in 1963.

China and Latin America: towards a new consensus of resource control?

Abstract The rise of China has provoked changes in global geopolitics, deeply influencing the global economy and trade relations. Of particular importance for agrarian change is China’s increased demand for (agro)commodities which has led to new partnerships abroad in order to secure natural resource access. This paper analyses the increasing economic and political relations between China and Latin America and raises questions concerning new trajectories of agrarian change and resource access, asking whether, how and to what extent a new consensus has emerged in reaction to the Washington Consensus which ushered in neoliberal policies to the region from the 1970s onward.

The ambiguous stance of Brazil as a regional power: piloting a course between commodity-based surpluses and national development

ABSTRACT This article argues that economic growth relying on commodity-based exports – combined with domestic market expansion for consumption, an overvalued exchange rate and high interest rates – constrained national development as much as it did Brazil’s status as a regional power, particularly in the 2000s. The Brazilian ‘neo-developmentalist model’ – pursuing export surplus in the balance of trade and foreign investment – was based excessively on government incentives for the export of natural resources. With regard to agrarian issues, Brazil again played an uncertain role as a regional power during the governments of both Lula (2003–2010) and Rousseff (2011–2016), despite important differences between the two administrations. On the one hand, the country encouraged the transfer of family farming policies to other Latin American countries. On the other hand, the government’s ‘national champions policies’ were also paramount in forging the expansion of agribusinesses and other multinationals across the continent. The very nature of this ambiguity rests on the contradictions between the narrative of a national development project and the reality of deindustrialization and commodity-based economic surplus. By drawing on aggregate data and secondary sources, this article explores the limits and contradictions of the Brazilian development path in becoming a more influential regional power in the 2000s.

BRICS, middle-income countries (MICs), and global agrarian transformations: internal dynamics, regional trends, and international implications

ABSTRACT The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries are emerging as key sites of agricultural commodity production, distribution, circulation, and consumption, contributing to major shifts in the character of regional and global agro-food systems. Their growing importance within the world food economy presents new challenges for scholars, activists, policy-makers, and development practitioners. The articles in this collection are located in their wider context, and the significance of their insights for a longer term research agenda within critical agrarian studies is explored. Four key themes are discussed: processes of agrarian change under way within BRICS countries; the role and impacts of BRICS countries in their respective regions; the rising importance of middle-income countries (MICs) within global and regional agro-food systems; and how the recent emergence of forms of populism, authoritarianism, and combinations of these two (i.e. ‘authoritarian populism’) is linked to the rise of the BRICS.

The ‘tenure guidelines’ as a tool for democratising land and resource control in Latin America

Abstract The current configuration of global land politics – who gets what land, how, how much, why and with what implications in urban and rural spaces in the Global South and North – brings disparate social groups, governments and social movements with different sectoral and class interests into the issue of natural resource politics. Governance instruments must be able to capture the ‘political moment’ marked by the increasing intersection of issues and state and social forces that mobilise around these. This paper looks at whether and how the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (also known as the TGs) passed in 2012 in the United Nations Committee for Food Security (CFS) can contribute to democratising resource politics today. This work puts forward some initial ideas about how systematic research into the TGs can be done more meaningfully.