Regional productive specialization and territorial vulnerability in the globalized agribusiness: local implications of the expansion and crisis of the sugarcane industry in Brazil

Author(s)

Henrique Faria dos Santos

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Geociências
• Defense date: 2022-04-18

Examining board members

Ricardo Castillo; Denise de Souza Elias; Lisandra Pereira Lamoso; Samuel Frederico; Mateus de Almeida Prado Sampaio

• Advisor: Ricardo Castillo

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the regional productive specialization and the territorial vulnerability resulting from the dynamics of expansion and crisis of the sugarcane industry in Brazil since the beginning of the 21st century. During the 2000s, the sugarcane industry underwent a new period of expansion in the Brazilian territory: (i) an increase in the demand for ethanol and sugar in the domestic and foreign markets and (ii) investments by national and transnational corporations in the construction of new sugarcane industrial plants (greenfields), in the modernization of existing ones (brownfields), in the expansion of sugarcane crop fields, and in the adoption of new agricultural and agro-industrial production techniques and logistics. The Brazilian government has always played a strategic role in the industry’s expansion: it has developed and implemented various neoliberal policies that have favored private investments, territorial fluidity, and competitiveness gains in the industry. The vectors of the geographic expansion of the sugarcane industry have settled in the most propitious areas of the south-central region of Brazil (which comprises the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Paraná), which have been affected by the expansion of sugarcane monoculture surrounding the industrial plants that have highlighted the contexts of productive specialization and the consolidation of both traditional and new Productive Regions of the Sugarcane Agribusiness (RPAS). However, in the 2010s, the industry faced substantial problems after the 2007-2008 international economic and financial crisis and to various conjunctural, technical, and structural issues that culminated in a wave of judicial recovery requests, bankruptcy filings, closure of dozens of industrial plants, and mergers and acquisitions, which intensified the process of centralization of capital that had already been underway during the industry’s expansion. The crisis in the sector affected several municipalities that were overly specialized and economically dependent on the sugarcane industry, resulting in higher unemployment rates, lower income of the local population, closure of local businesses (industries and services directly or indirectly linked to the sugarcane industry), industrial plants in debt to workers and suppliers, collapse of local trade, decrease in municipal taxes, among other consequences. Given that several industrial plants have been undergoing judicial recovery proceedings and have a high risk of ceasing their activities—as well as other plants that are less modern, excessively indebted, and vulnerable to the unstable global commodity market—, several productive municipalities in the sugarcane industry have low resilience and a high level of territorial vulnerability to the economic crisis caused by the closure of industrial plants (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/15377-3 - Productive regional specialization and territorial vulnerability: local implications of the expansion and crisis of the sugarcane industry in Brazil
• Grantee: Henrique Faria dos Santos
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate