Feeding the World: Brazil's Transformation into a Modern Agricultural Economy
Jonathan Coulis
Abstract
Feeding the World: Brazil's Transformation into a Modern Agricultural Economy investigates how Brazil grew into a modern agricultural powerhouse in the second half of the twentieth century. Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna focus specifically on commercial agriculture. Their definition of modernization includes crop diversification, the occupation of new spaces, and the adoption of technology to boost farm productivity. From roughly 1960, Brazil evolved into a globally competitive and diverse agricultural exporter. Brazil provides a compelling case study of agricultural modernization in dialogue with global trends. While many other countries pursued similar changes at the same time, Brazil carved out a remarkably large share of the global marketplace.The first half of the book traces the causes and catalysts of modernization at a national level, while the second delves into state-based case studies of Mato Grosso, São Paulo, and Rio Grande do Sul. Chapter 1 sketches out the premodern agricultural context before 1960. Chapters 2 through 4 investigate how modern agriculture surged in Brazil in two periods. The “first leap into modernity” unfolded between 1960 and 1980, with increases in farmed land and productivity (p. 41). Under the military regime (1964–85), state planners subsidized credit and invested in agricultural science and technology. The second phase, from 1990 until recently, saw agricultural modernization accelerate despite a collapse in government support. Farmers reorganized to compete in the free market, building vertical value chains supported by private agro-industrial companies. Despite the dramatic changes in politics and economic organization, key characteristics of modern agriculture remained consistent: ready access to credit, mechanization, intensive use of fertilizers and other chemical inputs, and high-quality agricultural research.Among the book's explorations of regional experiences with modernization schemes, the case of Mato Grosso is most compelling. This state's experiences stand in for changes in the broader cerrado (savanna) region, targeted for agricultural development by authoritarian and democratic-era planners alike. Government incentives and scientific research attracted wealthy farmers to the region to establish sprawling, large-scale enterprises. Using fertilizer mixes and irrigation, farmers turned a region once seen as agriculturally useless into a productive environment. Including the cerrado in the analysis of modernization is essential to understanding political, technological, and environmental factors that enabled Brazil's remarkable growth in the international agricultural markets.While the authors frame their book as a study of Brazil, they stick to their targeted “part of the rural world that would become modern,” principally in southern and center-west Brazil (p. 3). The agricultural economies that modernized, especially in the states of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, had historically led Brazil in “modern” agricultural approaches. The case studies bolster the authors' portrayal of Brazil as a stunning success story and simultaneously lead away from areas of social conflict, especially in the North and Northeast. In tracking modernization with such boundaries, the authors build a positive picture of agro-industrial expansion while painting a troubling one for small-scale farming, even as most Brazilian farmers are still smallholders. The path to modernization was not available to all farmers during the military period and became perhaps even more elusive after market liberalization in 1990.Research on Brazilian agricultural modernization tends to play a background role in the literature on agrarian reform, land disputes, rural worker movements, and population migration. Feeding the World suggests new approaches to these themes by focusing on agricultural modernization itself and tracing how and why it occurred with varying intensity since the 1960s. Crucially, the authors also emphasize how Brazil's agricultural sector experienced profound changes without altering the underlying power structures of landownership, borrowing the academic description of a “conservative agricultural revolution” (p. 2). In demonstrating how rapid and dramatic change in Brazil relied on and reinforced continuities in power relations, the authors reveal a pattern mirrored in other parts of the globe that have experienced agricultural change.English-language readers will benefit from the extensive use of Brazilian publications from the past six decades. The book carries forward the classic work of Werner Baer on the Brazilian economy by expanding agricultural-focused narratives in Brazil's national development. The authors mobilize a remarkable collection of economic statistics from government and private institutions, census materials, international reports, and secondary literature. A plethora of tables and graphs charting production rates will benefit commodity-focused scholars, especially those interested in agro-industry. Klein and Luna's emphasis on technological change and the role of research institutions will inform studies on the social and ecological impact of modernization, perhaps allowing scholars to problematize the authors' description of sustainability. This book will be useful for advanced-level classes on Latin American history, agrarian transformation in the twentieth century, commodity studies, and rural migration.