Agrarian Change in Brazil

Luciano Rezende Moreira

Review of Agrarian Studies, 2026, vol. 16, issue 1

Abstract: This ar­ti­cle analy­ses the his­tor­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of agri­cul­ture in Brazil and its role in shap­ing the coun­try’s agrar­ian struc­ture and rural econ­omy. Be­gin­ning with the colo­nial pe­riod, the study ex­am­ines the his­tor­i­cal foun­da­tions of Brazil­ian agri­cul­ture, marked by ex­port-ori­ented mono­cul­tures, large land­hold­ings, and the ex­ten­sive use of en­slaved labour. These his­tor­i­cal processes played a de­ci­sive role in the for­ma­tion of the coun­try’s agrar­ian struc­ture and in­flu­enced the long-term tra­jec­tory of rural de­vel­op­ment. The ar­ti­cle then ex­plores the de­vel­op­ment of the pro­duc­tive forces in Brazil­ian agri­cul­ture, em­pha­sis­ing the role of tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion, mech­a­ni­sa­tion, sci­en­tific re­search, and pub­lic poli­cies in trans­form­ing agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion. Par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion is given to the ex­pan­sion of mod­ern agribusi­ness dur­ing the twen­ti­eth cen­tury and to the role of re­search in­sti­tu­tions such as the Em­presa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Em­brapa) in adapt­ing agri­cul­tural tech­nolo­gies to trop­i­cal con­di­tions. The paper also high­lights the con­tin­ued im­por­tance of fam­ily farm­ing for do­mes­tic food pro­duc­tion and re­gional rural de­vel­op­ment. The co­ex­is­tence of large-scale agribusi­ness and small-scale fam­ily agri­cul­ture il­lus­trates the com­plex and het­ero­ge­neous na­ture of Brazil’s con­tem­po­rary agrar­ian struc­ture. Fi­nally, the ar­ti­cle sit­u­ates the Brazil­ian ex­pe­ri­ence within broader de­bates on global agrar­ian change, en­gag­ing with dis­cus­sions pre­sented at the In­ter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Agrar­ian Change. By ex­am­in­ing Brazil’s his­tor­i­cal tra­jec­tory and re­cent trans­for­ma­tions, the study at­tempts to con­tribute to a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the dy­nam­ics of agrar­ian de­vel­op­ment in trop­i­cal economies and of­fers com­par­a­tive in­sights rel­e­vant to other coun­tries of the Global South.

Keywords: AgribusinessCommunity/Rural/Urban Development; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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