Productive Macro-regions of Globalized Agribusiness: the two circuits of the agrarian economy and socio-environmental exploitation in the Cerrado.

• Grant number: 23/17695-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Abid Castillo
• Grantee: Matheus Dezidério Busca
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 25/05091-1 - Globalization and Modernized Agriculture: The Socio-Spatial and Environmental Implications of the Expansion of Globalized Agribusiness in the Brazilian Cerrado, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

The globalized agribusiness is advancing in Brazil based on the incomplete modernization of the countryside, causing profound transformations - social, productive, land, infrastructure and environmental - and deep-rooted socio-spatial inequalities in the countryside. The two circuits of the agrarian economy have emerged concomitantly from this modernization process. The upper circuit is linked to global players in the production and distribution of agricultural commodities, tied to financial and speculative capital and heavily dependent on technical, scientific and informational densities. The lower circuit, on the other hand, is related to agents who have been excluded from the possibility of capitalist modernization, therefore with reduced technical density and a low degree of capitalization, such as small producers, agrarian reform settlers, family farmers and traditional and indigenous populations, whose production is aimed at supplying local and regional food markets and also for their own subsistence. The natural Cerrado region is the main part of Brazil's territory where the commodities soy, corn and cotton are concentrated - in addition to the strong presence of livestock. The expansion of these crops, under the model of globalized agribusiness, is at the root of the destruction and exploitation of the biome and also of its populations. Given this situation, we propose a regionalization of globalized agribusiness (soy, corn and cotton) in the Cerrado through the identification of Globalized Agribusiness Productive Macro-Regions (MRPAs). Our intention is to understand the socio-spatial inequalities resulting from the dialectical relations between the agents of the upper circuit (globalized agribusiness) and the lower circuit of the agrarian economy in this biome.