Brazil's Big Soy Frontier
March 11, 2016 - 4:00 pm
Skylight Room (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
Brazilian Agribusiness, Public Policies and Development Strategies: Soybean Expansion in Mato Grosso
Sergio Pereira Leite, CPDA/UFRRJ – Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Pereira Leite analyses the transformation of the Brazilian agribusiness sector between 1990 and 2015, focusing on soybean production in Mato Grosso. This time period illustrates the specialization of the soybean production in Brazil, previously concentrated in the South, as it expanded to the Central-West (towards Minas Gerais) or to the North-East. He highlights social processes and public policies that shape the formation of this sector. Although state intervention has changed over time, government action has provided bases supporting agribusiness expansion. Public policies are part of the agribusiness society that is emblematic of the transformation process in the new agricultural frontier.
Brazil’s Big Soy Frontier: Global and Regional Perspectives
Mauricio Font, Bildner Center (CUNY)
This presentation draws from The State and the Private Sector in Latin America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), primarily from Chapter Two, “State and Liberalization in Latin America”, pp. 21-50; Chapter Four, “Commodities and Rail in Globalizing Brazil”, pp.103-132; Appendix C, “Brazil: Planning for New Infrastructure”, pp. 213-218; as well as discussions on soy in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
Moderator: Ken Erickson, Hunter College
Sergio Pereira Leite (Ph.D., University of Campinas) is associate professor in the Graduation Program in Social Sciences in Development, Agriculture and Society (CPDA), Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), where he was coordinator and where he currently heads the Observatory on Public Policies for Agriculture (OPPA). He was a fellow professor at Brazil and international universities, and scientific advisor of the scientific agencies and also a researcher and/or consultant for nongovernmental and multilateral organizations. He is a researcher at the National Institute of Science and Technology in Public Policy, Strategy & Development (CNPq INCT/PPED). He has extensive experience in the social sciences, economics, sociology and politics, focusing in the issues of agricultural economics, rural sociology, public policy, rural development, political economy and sociology of the development.
Mauricio Font (Ph.D. University of Michigan) is director of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies and Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York. Font’s most recent publication is The State and the Private Sector in Latin America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). His publications on Brazil include Coffee and Transformation in São Paulo, Brazil (Lexington Books, 2010), Transforming Brazil: A Reform Era in Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), The Brazilian State: Debate and Agenda (Lexington Books 2011), Reforming Brazil (Lexington Books/Bildner Western Hemisphere Series, 2004), and Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
Kenneth Erickson (Ph.D., Columbia University) is professor of Political Science at Hunter College. His areas of specialization include comparative politics, Latin American politics, democratization, drugs and public policy, and environmental and energy policy. Among his publications are (with D.A. Rustow) Global Research Perspectives: Paradigms, Concepts and Data in a Changing World, Comparative Political Dynamics: Global Research Perspectives (Harper Collins, 1991); Brazil: Corporatism, Democratization, and Dependency, Latin American Politics and Development (Eds. H. J. Wiarda and H. Kline, 1985).