Leasing small farms for sugarcane agroindustry: Influencing factors and perspectives for the northwestern region of the state of São Paulo

Abstract

The sugarcane industry is booming in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, with the occupation of new areas due to land lease. Current analysis deals with factors that influence small farmers to lease their farms, with special reference to the spread of sugarcane culture evidenced by the Office for Rural Development in the towns of Jales and Fernandopolis SP Brazil. Current descriptive and quantitative research retrieved information by a form given to 373 farmers with data evaluated by exploratory factorial analysis. Results show that most interviewees were male and retired, with low schooling level, dealing with family agriculture, and receiving four times the minimum wage. Further, 41% of farmers are leasing their farms to the benefit of the sugar-alcohol industry, featuring five factors which explain most variations of the original measurements and indicating a good level of data representation. Factors related to lease are profit, environmental impacts, characterization, origin of the rural entrepreneurship, the employment of outsourcing and life quality. However, the main reason is profit, with a 37.39% variance, with great advantages for farmers when they lease their land. Without an improvement in the profit of farms, the transference of land to the sugar industry would continue coupled to transformations in the agrarian structure of the region through the advance of monoculture.