The evolution of agriculture and land reform in Brazil, 1960-2006

Abstract

The impressive work of Werner Baer on Brazil is a major landmark in the study of the development of the country he chose to analyze. This is particularly the case regarding his interpretation of development based on industrialization in the post-World War II period. A major text on this is his Industrialization and Economic Development in Brazil (1965), which was translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil under the title A Industrialização e o Desenvolvimento Econômico do Brasil (several editions). This book was an important source of study for a generation of Brazilian economists. In it, he focuses on the role of agriculture in the development of Brazil and, particularly, of the limitations this sector experienced as import substitution industrialization was reaching its climax in the late 1950s and early 1960s; he also examines Brazil’s agrarian problem in the period. Similarly, in his major opus, The Brazilian Economy - Growth and Development (2001) which is now on its fifth edition (a sixth edition is in the making), Werner Baer offers us a keen analysis of the more recent developments in the agricultural and agrarian scenes.