Regional productive specialization of the sugar-energy agribusiness and territorial vulnerability in the immediate geographic region of Catanduva (SP)

• Grant number: 23/17563-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2024
• End date: May 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Samuel Frederico
• Grantee: Ana Julia Ferreira Gallo
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas (IGCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The present research project proposes to analyze the evolution of the regional specialization of agricultural production caused by sugar-energy agribusiness in the Immediate Geographic Region (IGR) of Catanduva, state of São Paulo (Brazil), and its economic implications for territorial vulnerability in some of its municipalities. In recent decades, sugar-energy agribusiness (the activity of producing and processing sugarcane to produce sugar, ethanol and bioelectricity) has had a great geographical expansion in the Brazilian territory, due to external and internal conditions that have increased the demand for sugar and ethanol and to high investments by large national and international companies to increase and modernize the production and logistics of these products. However, recent studies have revealed that the competitive operation of agroindustrial plants and their respective sugarcane monoculture areas has resulted in exacerbated regional and territorial productive specialization that alters the dynamics of rural and urban spaces and causes excessive economic dependence of the municipalities involved in their activities, culminating in high territorial vulnerability. Such a geographical situation seems to be occurring in the IGR of Catanduva, which has 8 agroindustrial plants installed and has registered, in recent years, an increase in the cultivated area of sugarcane and a growing participation of this crop in the agricultural area in several municipalities.