Financial capital and agricultural territory-use: financialization of land in the brazilian cerrado

Author(s)

Rodrigo Cavalcanti do Nascimento

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Rio Claro. 2019-07-30.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas. Rio Claro
• Defense date: 2019-04-15
• Advisor: Samuel Frederico

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, Brazilian territory was marked by emergence of agricultural real estate companies linked to financial capital. These companies have the land as the main financial asset. The emergence of these companies in Brazil dates back to recent the land grabbing worldwide. Characterized by relationship between the financial capital and the land market, the phenomenon of land grabbing was intensified in the Brazilian Cerrado through strategies of rent capture by the agricultural real estate companies opposing logic of financial profitability and the communities from Brazilian Cerrado. In view of this dialectic between global and local, we start from the conception that interest of the financial capital in the control of lands and in the modern agricultural production imposes a new logic of profitability the Brazilian agricultural companies, amplifying several conflicts in the Cerrado areas. Therefore, this thesis analyzed the strategies of use of the Brazilian territory by the company BrasilAgro dedicating itself to answer some questions as: how does finance capital impose your logic of profitability on agricultural real estate companies? Who are the financial agents that are behind this agricultural enterprise? What are your real interests in investing in land? What are the company's strategies for capturing land income? How does your performance relate to land grabbing? What are the territorial consequences of your investments? The information was obtained from field work between 2015 and 2018 with visits to the Company's corporate headquarters in São Paulo city and to some of its agricultural properties and to local communities affected by investments and to public institutions (UFBA) and to representatives of civil society (Comissão Pastoral da Terra; NGO 10esenvolvimento and community members of the Capão do Modesto), as well as the collection of data in newspapers and specialized magazines, books and scientific articles reports. BrasilAgro was created in 2005 by a partnership between Eduardo Elsztein (representative of the Argentine financial capital with expertise in urban real estate market) and the Brazilian, Elie Horn, with the intermediary of mega-investor George Soros. BrasilAgro is a pioneering Brazilian company in the agricultural real estate segment to be listed on the São Paulo and New York Stock Exchanges. Its business is concentrated in the commercialization of agricultural properties. In order to meet shareholders' expectations for high profitability, the Company seeks acquiring a large tract of rural land with the intention of become them into productive areas preferentially combining the production of flex crops with capital investments (infrastructure and agricultural technical systems). That latter case, beyond to artificially raising the quality and productivity of the land, it promotes the pricing of properties on the speculative land market in the agricultural frontier areas, such as Brazilian Cerrado. Since 2006, BrasilAgro company has acquired more than 250,000 hectares of its own land located in seven Brazilian states: Bahia, Goiás, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais and Piauí. The increase in land speculation and commercialization encourages the opening of new areas with significant changes in land use in relation to land expropriation, conflicts and land tenure. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/10471-6 - Financial capital and agricultural use of Brazilian territory: the acting in the land market the BrasilAgro company
• Grantee: Rodrigo Cavalcanti Do Nascimento
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate