‘Cerrado’, old and new agricultural frontiers

Abstract

The aim of the text is to discuss the occupation of the old and new agricultural frontiers in the ‘Cerrado’, highlighting the influence of official policies which, guided by a model of agricultural expansion intensive in capital, technology, and the use of natural resources, directed economic exploitation to ever more distant areas. It looks at the region called Matopiba, as a continuation of the movement of the exploitation of frontiers still covered in native vegetation. It shows that as well as having the general characteristics of the model of agricultural expansion adopted in other areas of the ‘Cerrado’, agriculture in this new frontier had the particularity of being connected to the global phenomenon of rising foreign ownership of land (‘land grabbing’), due to the increased presence of transnational companies and investment funds in the acquisition of areas, fruit of the movement resulting from the financialization of environmental assets (land, water, and forests). Finally, it deals with the implications of deforestation in the ‘Cerrado’, highlights governmental initiatives aimed at confronting it, as well as the political weight of Brazilian agribusiness, which has reduced the margin of action of environmental policies in the biome. It is concluded that the ‘Cerrado’, since it does not have the social appeal and protected status of forest biomes, seems to form a territory of sacrifice