THE BRAZILIAN RURAL MIDDLE CLASS AND AGRIBUSINESS: CO-OPTATION AND HEGEMONY

Abstract

This article analyzes how agribusiness co-opts support among small and medium-sized farmers to build and legitimize its hegemony. Aiming to understand the relationships established with the rural middle class, the central object of this study, actors from different groups and classes in the Brazilian countryside were interviewed. The findings suggest that its co-optation may frustrate the counter-hegemonic project defended by critics of agribusiness, but this does not mean that this class is an object in dispute: if agribusiness seeks to co-opt it, which does not happen without resistance, the social movements deny it, calling it “little agribusiness.” The result is a situation that is doubly favorable to agribusiness, since the demarcation of borders between small and medium-sized farmers not only favors the co-optation of the rural middle class by the hegemonic discourse, but also contributes to the isolation of its main critics and opponents.