By LEANDRO GALASTRI*
A resolute policy of agrarian reform by the Brazilian State could alleviate this situation of land concentration in the country
Between 2019 and 2022, Brazil was (mis)governed by a group devoid of any ethical principles and administrative capacity, corrupt, intellectually null and supportive of the most sordid social prejudices. People who had become rich in the underworld of political trickery, fraud, money bags and the Rio mafia. Brought to power by a right-wing extremist wave that not only affected Brazil (a phenomenon whose debate has no place here), it bequeathed to the country, at the height of its criminal performance, at least 100 preventable deaths, if vaccination against Covid-19 had not been irresponsibly postponed and then systematically sabotaged by the Federal Government.
The Lula government was forced, from January 2023 onwards, to rebuild part of the administrative machinery that had been dismantled by the disqualified previous ultra-rightist government, as well as to put back on track the basic functioning of important ministries and their lower levels, such as Education and of Health. It also needed to refound essential ministries for the country, previously extinguished by Jair Bolsonaro, such as the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Human Rights and Ministry of Labor. Lula also created the Ministry of Women, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and the Ministry of Racial Equality, all topics that were absolutely neglected, or even publicly rejected by the previous government.
To beat Jair Bolsonaro, who despite everything was still very popular at the time (the vote difference in favor of Lula was 1,72%), Lula needed to assemble a very wide network of allies, which even included former opponents from the traditional right. Brazilian, such as Vice President Geraldo Alckmin himself, who also holds the position of Minister of Industry and Commerce, and the Minister of Planning, Simone Tebet, to mention just a few central names in this broad alliance. Another of these conservative names is the Minister of Agriculture, Carlos Fávaro, an agriculturalist, former president of the Association of Soy and Corn Producers in the state of Mato Grosso and current senator licensed by the state. Regardless of Carlos Fávaro's stay in the Ministry, it is undeniable that the Agriculture and Livestock portfolio was reserved for representing the interests of Brazilian “agriculture”, within the scope of the arc of alliances that allowed the PT's victory. And this is one of the most sensitive problems of the current administration.
Profile of agribusiness in current Brazil
Although Lula appointed a PT member to the Ministry of Agrarian Development, which in theory is the body responsible for the progression of agrarian reform in the country, there is a flagrant imbalance of forces in favor of agribusiness and large producers of commodities agricultural. To guarantee tenuous governability, Lula cannot displease too much the relevant ruralist bench in the Brazilian parliament, which already has a practically gravitational tendency towards the right-wing opposition – the sector was one of the main electoral leaders and supporters of the government of Jair Bolsonaro and the 2016 coup against Dilma Roussef.
In June, the federal government launched the 2023 “Safra Plan”, a government item that allocates loans at subsidized interest to agricultural production. This year there will be R$364,2 billion for loans to medium and large producers, and R$77,7 billion for family farming.[1] Lula is betting on an increase of more than 25% in values compared to last year to improve his relationship with the big ruralists. Some of them continue to see the government's “ideological bias” in favor of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, exploring episodes of Lula's speeches praising small producers and family farming.[2] Meanwhile, the prospects for agrarian reform in the third Lula government are not rosy. In the budget for 2023, the budget for land acquisition for agrarian reform will be just R$2,4 million, and the granting of credit and assistance to settled families will be R$48 million – “far short of R$1 billion requested by the Agrarian Development Working Group (GT) of the Transitional Government for each of the actions”.[3]
It has already been noted that the expression “agrarian reform” has been avoided by Lula: “But if the emphasis given to combating hunger – which spanned the campaign, inauguration and the beginning of government – drew attention, it is also notable that the president has kept silent about the expression 'agrarian reform'”.[4] A search through the archive of official speeches shows that, since taking office, Lula has not referred to the expression. There was, in fact, a recomposition of investment in programs aimed at family farming – such as School Feeding (PNAE) and Food Acquisition from small producers (PAA). But the agrarian reform heading continues with the same scarcity inherited from the previous government. This situation makes Lula's promises to eliminate hunger in Brazil during his third term very difficult, considering that agrarian reform and the fight against hunger are two necessarily related issues.
The current government also has the challenge of reducing violence against indigenous communities and peasants, caused by the expansion interests of various aspects of agribusiness. In 2023, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) has already registered ten deaths in the countryside.[5] The year 2022 had already proved to be the deadliest since 2018, with 47 murders. There were 2.018 cases of violence against peasants, involving disputes over more than 80 million hectares of land across the national territory. These occurrences cover not only land, but disputes over water, as well as the rescue of enslaved workers, murders and attacks on peasant and indigenous leaders.[6].
The expectation of the CPT National Coordination is that the new federal administration will invest in reversing this trend. However, the main ways to reduce this violence are to guarantee communities access to land, to territory, with measures such as demarcation of indigenous lands and the continuation of agrarian reform plans, which involves reducing the power of large estates and mining. . Once again, measures that come up against the federal government's budget restrictions and its struggle with a strongly conservative parliament.
Another difficulty in balancing this relationship of forces has been the massive ideological propagation of “agro” in Brazil.[7] It is made up of aggressive advertising pieces inserted in the intervals of the highest-rated television programs in the country, has a daytime slot on television news programs and electronic and printed media and, currently, is even the backdrop for romantic serials in prime time on the Globo. Under the advertising motto “Agro is pop, agro is tech, agro is everything”, Brazilian society is daily “informed” about the current importance of agribusiness for the GDP, for the generation of jobs, taxes, trade balance, etc.[8] A more detailed analysis denies this interested euphoria and brings us closer to the Brazilian reality on this topic.
Agribusiness in Brazil receives a lot and returns very little to society. In 2020, for example, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the Union's tax waiver for agriculture and agroindustry represented R$29,2 billion.[9] In the same year, agribusiness paid just R$16,3 in export tax – for exports that exceeded US$90 billion – which represents 0,000003% of total sales, or one cent in tax for every R$323 thousand. The official rate is 30%, but legislation allows the government to change the tax to stimulate specific sectors of the economy.
Tax favors also occur for the production of pesticides, which generates US$ 10 billion annually in Brazil and is oligopolized by foreign companies. Around 80% of the pesticides consumed in the country are destined for just four crops: soybeans, sugar cane, corn and cotton. Among the taxes from which this industry is exempt is the Contribution for Social Security Financing (PIS/COFINS).
Only the state of São Paulo, the richest in the nation, grants the agro-export sector exemptions and subsidies that represent more than the entire savings estimated with the São Paulo Pension Reform (which removed numerous salary rights from active and retired public servants and privatized the social security and retirement service, forcing its workers to hire the services of private banks to set up pension funds).[10]
The inequality of the Brazilian tax system does not occur due to the amount of taxes charged, but mainly due to its regressive, indirect nature and focused on taxation on consumption. Meanwhile, export agriculture is exempt from several taxes.[11] On the contrary, tax collection from “agriculture” is negligible compared to other economic activities – around R$6 billion in 2019 – while activities linked to the service sector, such as retail trade, generated revenue of almost R$ 112 billion in the same period.[12]
The share of Brazilian GDP – the sum of all wealth in the form of final goods and services produced in the country within a year – is equally miniscule compared to other sectors. Agriculture represents the smallest fraction. Between 2002 and 2018, “agro” contributed only 5,4%, on average, while the industrial sector contributed 25,5% and the services sector 52,4%.[13]
Even officially existing debts are not paid by “agro”. According to the Federal Revenue of Brazil, the 100 largest debtors of the Rural Land Tax accumulate a total of R$15,6 billion, or 55% of the total owed. They are all large landowners who continue to renegotiate their debt, with the approval of the Brazilian State, with the aim of increasingly reducing the amount owed, obtaining discounts that can reach 95% of this amount.[14]
Agribusiness also contributes very little to the creation of jobs in the countryside, quite contrary to its ideological propaganda. Data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), always accessible to the public, blatantly refute this argument. The 2017 Agricultural Census recorded a total of more than 15,1 million rural workers, including formal and non-formal workers. Of this total, 10,1 million are from family farming and 4,9 from non-family farming, that is, jobs in the countryside are generated by the peasantry, with employer farming taking a backseat.
It is no coincidence that the agribusiness narrative, mainly through the advertising pieces published by Globo Television Network, seeks to erase the difference between employer farming and family farming, combining the latter with examples of the application of new technologies, productivity, etc. An even more convincing element of the job creation fallacy can be observed during the COVID 19 pandemic, in 2020. Unlike the industrial and services sectors, the agricultural sector did not stop, with record production and exports. However, 185.477 thousand “agricultural” workers lost their jobs.[15]
International agribusiness policy
Some basic characteristics of agriculture in globalized capitalism help to explain the contemporary situation of the countryside in Brazil.[16] Contradictorily, the development of capitalism in agriculture shows that it is unifying what it separated at its beginning, that is, industry and agriculture. This occurs, in short, because the capitalist also becomes a landowner, a landowner: “industrial capitalist, land owner and agricultural capitalist have one name, they are one person or one company”.[17] Brazil's increasing insertion in agribusiness occurs under this contradictory logic.
The capitalist insertion of Brazilian elites into world capital has as one of its ideologically strongest expressions agribusiness and its commodities. It is about guaranteeing the balance of trade to maintain the country in the international financial circle of paying interest on public debt, hence the voluminous State financing for the sector. At the same time, this policy leaves the country vulnerable when it comes to food sovereignty: “The country produces and exports the food that is missing from the plates of most Brazilian workers”.[18]
As is the consensus among groups and movements that work in defense of agrarian reform in Brazil, democratization of access to land and combating hunger are inseparable dimensions. IBGE data show that the production of basic foods has been falling annually in Brazil, losing space to agribusiness. Between 1991 and 2021, per capita cassava production decreased by 47%, beans by 26% and rice by 12%. Per capita production of soybeans grew by an absurd 600%, corn by 180% and sugar cane by 100% in the same period.[19] According to food security researchers, in 2022 hunger affected 33 million Brazilians, around 15% of the country's total population. In the countryside, 22% of rural producers were in a state of severe food insecurity.[20]
The fact is that agribusiness aims at the world market, promoting the emergence of a new internationalized national bourgeoisie. This entire process is of interest to the international financial sector and national and international capitalists. The first benefits from the interest on public debt paid royally by the Brazilian State with a primary surplus balance. The latter increase their profits with the growth of exports.
Internally, this process changes the composition of urban and rural workers. Capital expels workers and peasants from the countryside, concentrating them in cities. In favor of monopoly capital, these workers will now work in industry, commerce or services, or return to be salaried in the countryside. The capitalist/land owner now appropriates, at the same time, the profits from industrial, commercial and agricultural activity, and the land is transformed “into a 'sea' of sugarcane, soybeans, oranges, pasture, etc.”.[21]
Within the scope of this same phenomenon, capital also creates, recreates and redefines family relations of peasant production. In this case, capital forces the conditions for the peasantry to produce raw materials of interest to their industries, or forces them to consume their products in the field (feed for poultry and pigs, for example). Thus, the income from land produced by peasants is subjected to the logic of agribusiness and is appropriated by it: “we are facing the metamorphosis of income from land into capital”[22].
The emphasis on employer agriculture as a priority model of agricultural development accelerates the processes of decomposition of peasant agriculture, pushing out of its economic activity a huge number of peasants who then become former rural producers. Two of the consequences are the increase in poverty in the countryside and the expansion of salaried production relations (permanent and temporary), giving rise to a huge rural proletariat.[23]
Plínio Sampaio Jr.[24] suggests that the development pattern in force in the country for decades reproduces the two conditions that maintain a subordinate and dependent capitalism in Brazil: the control of international capital over the strategic links of the economy and the perpetuation of social segregation as the basis of national society.[25] Agrarian reform, in such a context, is fought aggressively and systematically by class fractions that depend on the super-exploitation of work in the countryside and in the city, a fight led by large landowners and large agro-industrial companies.
Thus, it is not just the so-called “unproductive” large estates that have an interest in preventing the democratization of land. The large modern agricultural enterprise also requires the concentration of the land structure, the blocking of poor workers from access to land and a legal structure that guarantees “the total availability of land to the imperatives of the exploitation of agrarian capital”.[26] Thus, to depreciate the value of labor power and maximize the surplus extracted from agriculture, the preservation of social inequalities in the countryside is a central element. The absence of a consistent agrarian reform policy is a “reason of state”. Annulling the possibilities of effective solutions to the agrarian issue, political and economic elites affirm the strategic importance of large estates as one of the foundations of the accumulation pattern of dependent Brazilian capitalism.[27]
in your book Coronelismo, hoe and vote, published for the first time in 1948, Victor Nunes Leal offered some figures on land concentration in Brazil. Citing the 1940 agricultural census, it recorded that 48,31% of the total cultivable area in the country, in the form of establishments with 1000 hectares or more, was in the hands of 1,46% of owners[28]. In 2017, data from the agricultural census reported practically the same numbers: considering establishments with 1000 hectares or more, 48% of the land made up just 1% of the properties. If we increase the percentage of properties to 10%, we reach 73% of the entire agricultural area in Brazil.[29]
Conclusion
A resolute policy of agrarian reform on the part of the Brazilian State could alleviate this situation of land concentration in the country. The first Lula government even pointed, albeit timidly, in this direction. Between 2003 and 2006, 381,3 thousand families were settled (36,3 thousand in 2003; 81,2 thousand in 2004; 127,5 thousand in 2005; 136,3 thousand in 2006, a record number to date for a single year) . But the second Lula government (2007-2010) started to slow down settlements, reaching a total of 232 thousand in the following four years (4 thousand in 67,5; 2007 thousand in 70,1, 2008 thousand in 55,4; 2009 thousand in 39,4).
The settlement policy was further weakened during Dilma Roussef's governments and, needless to say, disappeared after Michel Temer's coup government (2016-2018). Be that as it may, the fact is that in practically eighty years the relative numbers of land ownership concentration in Brazil have not changed. In other words, the small advances of the truncated agrarian reform in the country occurred at the same time that new areas of large estates were incorporated by a few owners.
In this dynamic, deforestation, theft of public lands and the expropriation of small peasants continue to be common practices, while agribusiness maintains its regressive political, economic and ideological dominance. Already in 2023, at the beginning of President Lula's third term, there are no even rhetorical signs that any recovery of the agrarian reform policy will occur.
* Leandro Galastri he is professor of political science at Unesp-Marília. Author of Gramsci, Marxism and Revisionism (Associated Authors). [https://amzn.to/3LJq2VU]
References
ATLAS of Brazilian Rural Space / IBGE, Geography Coordination Location: Rio de Janeiro Editor: IBGE Year: 2020 Physical description: 321 p.
BUSS, Gabriel; SOARES, Gabriela. Bench says that Lula must move away from segregationist ideology in agriculture. Power360. 27 June 2023. Available at: https://www.poder360.com.br/congresso/bancada-diz-que-lula-deve-afastar-ideologia-segregacionista-no-agro/.
CANZIAN, Fernando. Brazil subsidizes agribusiness little, but the public sector was key to the leap. Folha de S. Paul. 12 Jul. 2023. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2023/07/brasil-subsidia-pouco-o-agronegocio-mas-setor-publico-foi-chave-para-salto.shtml.
CRITICIZED for meeting with MST, Alckmin has lunch with agricultural leaders. Power360. May 16, 2023. Available at: https://www.poder360.com.br/governo/criticado-por-encontro-com-mst-alckmin-almoca-com-lideres-do-agro/.
FERREIRA, David. Ten murders have already been recorded in the countryside in 2023, reveals coordinator of the Pastoral Land Commission. The Globe. 18 Apr. 2023. Available at: https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/noticia/2023/04/dez-assassinatos-ja-foram-registrados-no-campo-em-2023-revela-coordenadora-da-comissao-pastoral-da-terra.ghtml.
GIOVANAZ, Daniel. Agribusiness paid just R$16,3 in export taxes throughout 2019. Brazil of Fact. 08 Sep. 2020. Available at: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2020/12/08/agronegocio-pagou-apenas-r-16-3-mil-em-imposto-de-exportacao-durante-todo-2019.
GOVERNMENT ripped off bridge with agriculture, says panel about MST event. Power360. 14 Mar. 2023. Available at: https://www.poder360.com.br/congresso/governo-arrancou-ponte-com-agro-diz-bancada-sobre-evento-do-mst/.
GUEDES, Sebastião NR; Fleury, Renato R. 25 years of agrarian reform and the permanence of land concentration in Brazil: explanatory hypotheses. In: MATTEI, Lauro (org.). Agrarian Reform in Brazil: trajectory and dilemmas. Florianópolis: Insular, 2017, pp. 269-297.
HERMANSON, Marcos. Lula's government begins with an announcement to combat hunger, but with a low budget for agrarian reform. The tares and the wheat. 1st Mar. 2023. Available at: https://ojoioeotrigo.com.br/2023/03/reforma-agraria-lula/.
LEAL, Victor Nunes. Coronelismo, hoe and vote🇧🇷 São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012.
MITIDIERO JUNIOR, Marco Antônio; GOLDFARB, Yamila. Agro is not tech, agro is not pop, much less everything. ABRA (Brazilian Agrarian Reform Association); Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Sept. 2021. Available at: https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/brasilien/18319-20211027.pdf.
THE POWER of agriculture. Folha de S. Paul. 17 Jul. 2023. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao/2023/07/o-poder-do-agro.shtml.
OLIVEIRA, Marcos de. Large rural producers do not pay taxes. Merchant Monitor. 15 Jan. 2021. Available at: https://monitormercantil.com.br/grande-produtor-rural-nao-paga-impostos/.
RODRIGUES, Paloma. Harvest Plan for family farming provides R$77,7 billion to finance production. G1, 26 June. 2023. Available at: https://g1.globo.com/economia/agronegocios/noticia/2023/06/28/plano-safra-da-agricultura-familiar-preve-r-777-bilhoes-para-financiar-producao.ghtml.
RONCAGLIA, André. Agro is not pop… agro is lobby! Folha de S. Paul. 24 Aug. 2023. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/andre-roncaglia/2023/08/o-agro-nao-e-pop-o-agro-e-lobby.shtml.
SAMPAIO JR, Plínio de Arruda. Critical notes on the current affairs and challenges of the agrarian issue. In: STEDILE, João Pedro (org.). The agrarian question in Brazil v. 8. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2013.
UMBELINO DE OLIVEIRA, Ariovaldo. Barbarism and modernity: transformations in the countryside and agribusiness in Brazil. In: STEDILE, João Pedro (org.). The agrarian question in Brazil, v. 7. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2013, p. 127-129.
VILELA, Pedro Rafael. Brazil recorded a conflict in the countryside every four hours in 2022. Agency Brazil. 17 Apr. 2023. Available at: https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/direitos-humanos/noticia/2023-04/brasil-registrou-um-conflito-no-campo-cada-quatro-horas-em-2022.
ZAFALON, Mauro. Employed population, income and education in agriculture increase. Folha de S. Paul. 31 Jul. 2023. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/vaivem/2023/07/populacao-ocupada-renda-e-escolaridade-no-agro-aumentam.shtml.
Notes
[1] RODRIGUES, Paloma. Harvest Plan for family farming provides R$77,7 billion to finance production. G1, 26 June. 2023. Available at: https://g1.globo.com/economia/agronegocios/noticia/2023/06/28/plano-safra-da-agricultura-familiar-preve-r-777-bilhoes-para-financiar-producao.ghtml.
[2] BUSS, Gabriel; SOARES, Gabriela. Bench says that Lula must move away from segregationist ideology in agriculture. Power360. 27 June 2023. Available at: https://www.poder360.com.br/congresso/bancada-diz-que-lula-deve-afastar-ideologia-segregacionista-no-agro/
GOVERNMENT ripped off bridge with agriculture, says panel about MST event. Power360. 14 Mar. 2023. Available at: https://www.poder360.com.br/congresso/governo-arrancou-ponte-com-agro-diz-bancada-sobre-evento-do-mst/.
CRITICIZED for meeting with MST, Alckmin has lunch with agricultural leaders. Power360. May 16, 2023. Available at: https://www.poder360.com.br/governo/criticado-por-encontro-com-mst-alckmin-almoca-com-lideres-do-agro/.
[3] HERMANSON, Marcos. Lula's government begins with an announcement to combat hunger, but with a low budget for agrarian reform. The tares and the wheat. 1st Mar. 2023. Available at: https://ojoioeotrigo.com.br/2023/03/reforma-agraria-lula/.
[4] Cit.
[5] FERREIRA, David. Ten murders have already been recorded in the countryside in 2023, reveals coordinator of the Pastoral Land Commission. The globe. 18 Apr. 2023. Available at: https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/noticia/2023/04/dez-assassinatos-ja-foram-registrados-no-campo-em-2023-revela-coordenadora-da-comissao-pastoral-da-terra.ghtml ; Accessed on: 20/08/23.
[6] VILELA, Pedro Rafael. Brazil recorded a conflict in the countryside every four hours in 2022. Agência Brasil. 17 Apr. 2023. Available at: https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/direitos-humanos/noticia/2023-04/brasil-registrou-um-conflito-no-campo-cada-quatro-horas-em-2022; Accessed on: 20/08/23.
[7] ZAFALON, Mauro. Employed population, income and education in agriculture increase. Folha de S. Paulo. 31 Jul. 2023. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/vaivem/2023/07/populacao-ocupada-renda-e-escolaridade-no-agro-aumentam.shtml; Accessed on: 20/08/23.
THE POWER of agriculture. Folha de S. Paulo. 17 Jul. 2023. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao/2023/07/o-poder-do-agro.shtml; Accessed on: 20/08/23.
CANZIAN, Fernando. Brazil subsidizes agribusiness little, but the public sector was key to the leap. Folha de S. Paulo. 12 Jul. 2023. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2023/07/brasil-subsidia-pouco-o-agronegocio-mas-setor-publico-foi-chave-para-salto.shtml; Accessed on: 20/08/23.
[8] “Winning hearts and minds to adopt this speech and build this conviction is the focus of the advertising campaign sponsored by JBS, the largest meat company in the world, and by Ford, the automotive industry with products aimed at agriculture”. MITIDIERO JUNIOR, Marco Antônio; GOLDFARB, Yamila. Agro is not tech, agro is not pop, much less everything. ABRA (Brazilian Agrarian Reform Association); Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, September 2021. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/brasilien/18319-20211027.pdf , P. 2.
[9] OLIVEIRA, Marcos de. Large rural producers do not pay taxes. Commercial Monitor. 15 Jan. 2021. Available at: https://monitormercantil.com.br/grande-produtor-rural-nao-paga-impostos/; Accessed on: 18/08/23.
[10] GIOVANAZ, Daniel. Agribusiness paid just R$16,3 in export taxes throughout 2019. Brasil de Fato. 08 Sep. 2020. Available at: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2020/12/08/agronegocio-pagou-apenas-r-16-3-mil-em-imposto-de-exportacao-durante-todo-2019; Accessed on: 18/08/23.
[11] MITIDIERO JUNIOR, Marco Antônio; GOLDFARB, Yamila. Agro is not tech, agro is not pop, much less everything. ABRA (Brazilian Agrarian Reform Association); Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, September 2021. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/brasilien/18319-20211027.pdf , P. 21.
[12] “Activities linked to the service sector earn significantly more, as is the case with Retail Commerce, almost 112 billion; Legal, Accounting and Auditing Activities, almost 13 billion; Advertising and Market Research, more than 9 billion; and an activity that attracts a lot of attention, Education, more than 60 billion reais raised in 2019. Education pays much more taxes than Agriculture.” Op. cit, p. 17.
[13] “The explanation is simple. Raw materials have low values compared to other products (technology, manufactured goods, services, etc.) and, in the national case, as we have seen, most of the raw materials produced do not add value through industrial processes. The power of Agro was reduced, between 2010 and 2018, to a little more than 5% of GDP.” Op. cit, p. 12.
[14] Op. cit, p. 24.
[15] “The robotization and digitalization of agricultural and livestock production, tractors guided by GPS, recognition sensors for soil, planting and harvesting, recognition and spraying drones, among many other examples, have been producing a field without people”. Op. Cit, p. 28. In 2023 figures, Andre Rocaglia, professor of Economics at the Federal University of São Paulo, presents the following table: “Agriculture represents 7,9% of GDP and a measly 3% of formal jobs in the economy, but pays less than 1,5 .13,5% of total tax collection. It is the only sector that captures a share of tax benefits (12,9%) greater than its contribution to GDP. By comparison, industry represents 15% of GDP and 31% of formal jobs, being responsible for 12,5% of taxes collected and 3,7% of tax benefits. Furthermore, agriculture would not be tech without the heavy investments made by the State in agricultural research. Embrapa will cost R$2023 billion to the public coffers in 2.500. Around 1,1 researchers offer innovations that improve the sector's productivity. In contrast, Embrapii (Brazilian Association of Industrial Research and Innovation) receives R$53 billion, while Ceitec, the state-owned chip that keeps liberals up at night, costs R$24 million to the federal budget.” RONCAGLIA, André. Agro is not pop… agro is lobby! Folha de S. Paulo. 2023 Aug. XNUMX. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/andre-roncaglia/2023/08/o-agro-nao-e-pop-o-agro-e-lobby.shtml. Accessed on: 24/08/23.
[16] UMBELINO DE OLIVEIRA, Ariovaldo. Barbarism and modernity: transformations in the countryside and agribusiness in Brazil. In: STEDILE, João Pedro (org.). The agrarian question in Brazil, v.7. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2013, p. 127-129.
[17] Op. Cit., p. 127.
[18] Op. Cit., p. 132.
[19] HERMANSON, Marcos. Lula's government begins with an announcement to combat hunger, but with a low budget for agrarian reform. The chaff and the wheat. 1st Mar. 2023. Available at: https://ojoioeotrigo.com.br/2023/03/reforma-agraria-lula/; 01/03/2023. Accessed on: 20/08/23.
[20] Op. cit.
[21] UMBELINO DE OLIVEIRA, Ariovaldo. Barbarism and modernity: transformations in the countryside and agribusiness in Brazil. In: STEDILE, João Pedro (org.). The agrarian question in Brazil, v.7. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2013, p. 127-129.
[22] Op. cit.
[23] GUEDES, Sebastião NR; Fleury, Renato R. 25 years of agrarian reform and the permanence of land concentration in Brazil: explanatory hypotheses. In: MATTEI, Lauro (org.). Agrarian Reform in Brazil: trajectory and dilemmas. Florianópolis: Insular, 2017, pp. 269-297.
[24] SAMPAIO JR, Plínio de Arruda. Critical notes on the current affairs and challenges of the agrarian issue. In: STEDILE, João Pedro (org.). The agrarian question in Brazil v. 8. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2013, p. 194.
[25][25] “Agro is not and does not produce the 'wealth of Brazil' (according to GDP-IBGE data), but it receives the majority of public resources in credits, incentives, tax exemptions, debt forgiveness, etc. The big profit goes to foreign-owned companies like Bunge and Cargill. It is not a great generator of work and income and depends on technological packages imported from abroad. From an environmental point of view, it is the main responsible for forest devastation and poisoning of soil, water, men, women and children... Agriculture does not feed the world because it does not even feed Brazilians, as can be seen from the perspective of food price inflation. and increased hunger in Brazil. Where are Agro's profits? How strong is currency evasion? What is Agro's share in the formation of public debt? Is soy really Brazilian, since foreign multinationals are the major traders? ” MITIDIERO JUNIOR, Marco Antônio; GOLDFARB, Yamila. Agro is not tech, agro is not pop, much less everything. ABRA (Brazilian Agrarian Reform Association); Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, September 2021. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/brasilien/18319-20211027.pdf , P. 34.
[26] SAMPAIO JR, Plínio de Arruda. Critical notes on the current affairs and challenges of the agrarian issue. In: STEDILE, João Pedro (org.). The agrarian question in Brazil v. 8. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2013, p. 199.
[27] Op. Cit., p. 226.
[28] LEAL, Victor Nunes. Coronelismo, hoe and vote. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012, p. 50.
[29] Atlas of Brazilian rural space / IBGE, Geography Coordination Location: Rio de Janeiro Editor: IBGE Year: 2020 Physical description: 321 p.
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