Agricultural Development on the Brazilian Frontier: Southern Mato Grosso

Abstract

Brazilian agricultural output performance has been remarkably good in the post-World War 11 period as supply increases have kept up with demand growth and shifts of demand between commodity groups maintaining real food prices relatively constant. This good performance has been achieved in spite of neglect and 1/ even implementation of policies adverse to the agricultural sector.-Most of this output increase has been attributed to the expansion of conventional factors of production, land and labor, rather than the substitution for these conventional factors with "modern inputs,r' 2/ such as fertilizer and machinery.-These increases in conventional inputs have been primarily achieved with a large-scale reshuffling of the population between states and regions. From 1950 to 1970 the largest rates of immigration have been to the frontier states of Paran~, Goia's,and Mato Grosso. (See Table 1.) There has also been a more limited 2. and erratic migration into the Northern frontier states of l?ar~, Amazonas, and Maranh~o. The other in-migrant recipient states have been associated with the rapid urban-industrial growth of S%o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Most other states have consistently had net out-migration over these two decades. This includes not only all of the Northeast but also a majority of the states in the South and East. Public investment has facilitated this migration with the construction of infrastructure. From 1952 to 1968 the road network in Brazil more than tripled reaching 940,000 kilometers. Road quality has also been substantially improved with paved roads increasing from 36,000km in the early sixties to 60,000km in 1972.3' This population reshuffling was associated with the rapid expansion of crop area on the frontier. (See Table 2.) The absolute gains in land area, except for Paran~were less in the frontier states than in some of the older agricultural areas; however, the relative gains were much larger. The aggregate crop yields in the frontier have fallen as cultivation has been pushed into more marginal areas especially in the "cerradotfof the Central West 4/ frontier.-However, the area expansion has been so rapid in the frontier states that these states have attained the highest crop output growth rates in the country over the last two decades. Only Maranh~o, which is also a frontier state, has exceeded the crop output growth rates of Paran6, Goi&, and Mato Grosso. In older agricultural states such as S~o Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, and some states in the Northeast aggregate yields have slightly increased.

Labor, Land and Agricultural Credit Policies and Their Adverse Impacts on Poverty in Brazil

“…In order to this occur, however, it would have to be made feasible the access of family farm to the credit market, since it is only with the existence of an effective demand on the part of family farm can there be a supply of appropriate machinery; this greater access to of family farm could be made easier, also, by the creation of a machinery rental market. In this respect, it is interesting to note that Sanders and Bein (1976) found a regular use of machinery, through rental, on the part of the family farmers in Terenos (a cerrado region). This confirms our hypothesis that it is not mechanization in itself, but the institutional context-that restricts the access to credit by the family farm in Brazil and prevents the creation of a machinery rental market-that has led to the predominance of large-scale production in Brazilian agriculture.…”

“…Sanders and Ruttan (1978) present an analysis very interesting of the process of mechanization in the cerrado, although, again, they underestimate the importance of having been able, in the cerrado, to overcome the labor problem faced by Brazilian agriculture, and that was created by the labor and land policies. The mechanization in the cerrado is also object of analysis of Sanders and Bein (1976) therefore, large scale production more profitable in Brazilian agriculture. Thus, the predominance of the large-scale production in Brazilian agriculture should not be taken as evidence of the presence of economies of scale in agriculture, as it is used to think.…”

Emergence of Capitalized Family Farms in Latin America

“…During the 1950s and 1960s, the frontier pushed into the central-western states of Mato Grosso and Goias. As the result of a new road network and other statefinanced infrastructure, this distant frontier, which until then had sustained subsistence farming, now had access to a commercialized and capitalized agriculture (Sanders and Bein 1976). During the 1970s, the colonization spilled northward into the Amazon region and southwest into the Paraguayan provinces of Alto Parana, Canindeyu, and Itapua (compare, Baer and Birch, 1983).…”