Dynamic of the territorial expansion of sucroethanol agribusiness: theoretical contributions to the actuation of social movements

Abstract

Based on the premise that the growing expansion of sugarcane agribusiness
after the 1970s led to a series of social and environmental impacts in the agrarian space
of Brazil, the prospect of a further expansion by the current national and international
juncture, points to a proportional intensification of these impacts. Insofar as the sugar
cane agribusiness expands across the country, there would be a proportional increase in
land concentration, territorial disputes with agro-food production, as well as
exploitation of the workforce employed in the fields. Therefore, the Brazilian
government in 2009 engineered the Agroecological Zoning of Sugarcane, whose goal
would be to organize the sugarcane production in the Brazilian territory, in order to
become an instrument capable of showing to the national and international public the
alleged sustainability of the national sugarcane agribusiness. In this context, the aim of
this paper is to analyze the zoning implemented by the Federal Government from the
perspective of the logic of geographical location of the sugarcane agribusiness, driven
by the ground rent, showing that spatial policy cannot mitigate the environmental
impacts inherent in agrofuel production in the agribusiness way of production.