The geopolitics of Brazilian soybeans

Abstract

Soybean plays a major role in the development of Brazilian agribusiness, and in turn in Brazilian geopolitical power as well. It is a pillar of Brazil's insertion into a 'new multipolar world order' as basis for much Brazilian land ownership in neighboring countries, for the extension of political influence in Africa, and it is especially important for balancing trade with Brazil's new primary commercial partner, China. Yet the US dollar and North Atlantic transnational companies still control global soybean markets and production technologies. In a context marked by booming but volatile commodity prices, food crises, riots and revolutions in food-importing countries, a global rush for farmland, and severe droughts and climate change, the soybean agribusiness in Brazil takes on new and crucial geopolitical significance. I trace the geopolitical role it has served in consolidating the 'green revolution' in Brazil, and raise questions about the intersection between agroindustrial markets and currencies: could agricultural commodities serve geopolitical functions (and thus contestation) similar to those 'petro-dollars' have served since the 1970s? These considerations show how the political ecology of soybean shapes and is shaped by inter-regional and global-scale processes, and reveals new directions for research on the emerging geopolitical landscape of our century.

Fostering water resource governance and conservation in the Brazilian Cerrado biome

“…The opening of the Cerrado frontier spurred by the relocation of the capital to Brasília in 1960, road network investments, deforestation making way for planted pastures and croplands, and advances in agricultural technology, transformed the Cerrado and turned Brazil into the world's largest exporter of beef and soybeans (FAO, ; Oliveira, ; Walker et al, ). The Brazilian Cerrado tropical savanna lost more than half of its original 2 million km 2 in the last 55 years (Lapola et al, ; Sano, Rosa, Brito, & Ferreira, ) and concomitantly became Brazil's breadbasket, with more than 20 million ha of cropland and 56 million ha of cultivated pastures (MapBiomas, ).…”

The Soybean Trap: Challenges and Risks for Brazilian Producers

“…Brazil began to encourage soybean production in the mid-1970's as a national objective during the military regime, and this model of economic development has not been questioned by any administration that has governed the country since. Innovations to improve production come every year in the form of attractive interest rates or less bureaucratic systems to obtain credit, political lobbying to help producers obtain debt forgiveness or renegotiation of debts with public (e.g., banks) and private financers (e.g., traders), seed varieties of higher productivity (e.g., kg per hectares), more effective pesticides, or technological tools (e.g., connection of mobile phones with machinery to provide producers with realtime field information; Chatalova et al, 2016;Oliveira, 2016;Wesz, 2016).…”

“…As a result, Brazil has increased the number of soybean producers engaging in this global market, as observed by the exports to China and other countries since 2000s (Silva et al, 2017). Concomitantly, there has been consolidation of private companies developing and marketing seeds, agrochemicals (e.g., fertilizers, pesticides) and dominant in the commodities market (Oliveira, 2016;Wesz, 2016;Westengen et al, 2019).…”

Farming out of place:

“…Several of my opening interviews with farmers began with a retelling of where the farmers’ ancestors came from and where they settled, with little mention of what existed before their arrival. The Cerrado, supported by government programs to incentivize deforestation and development (Oliveira ), offered cheap land, cheap workers, and boundless opportunity.…”