Geoforum 63 (2015) 1–4

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Critical review

Cracking the nut of agribusiness and global food insecurity:

In search of a critical agenda of research
Antonio A.R. Ioris
Institute of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The article examines some of the main trends of the modernisation of agribusiness and raises some
Received 7 April 2015 questions about geographical transformations taking place in the centre and north of Brazil. The country
Received in revised form 2 May 2015 represents an emblematic case of neo-liberalised agriculture in need of further investigation. It is dis-
Accepted 10 May 2015
cussed in the text how corporate, industrial-scale agribusiness practices in Brazil bring back some spec-
Available online 19 May 2015
tral elements of capitalism, which never disappeared and in which the invisible becomes visible again. It
is a phenomenon of multiple dialectics that needs further theoretical, methodological and investigative
Keywords:
elaboration. The most dramatic circumstances, and most interesting for academics to study, are at the
Agribusiness
Corporations
frontier of the expansion of agribusiness, where spatially and temporally patterns are heterogeneous
Food regime and largely unpredictable. Agribusiness is especially promoted at the agriculture frontier in Brazil
Agriculture modernisation because it is in itself an economic, ecological and ethical frontier. Therefore, critical research into the
Brazil complexity of contemporary agribusiness should really be about the political economy of alternatives
Amazon to the highly vulnerable and unsatisfactory approaches to food and agriculture that prevail today and
Mato Grosso continue to expand unabated.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction: Contemporary agribusiness as the rural expression of neoliberalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. The unpalatable agribusiness of Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. In search of critical thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1. Introduction: Contemporary agribusiness as the rural
expression of neoliberalism
This brief article is intended to review some main trends around
the modernisation of agribusiness and to raise some questions
about geographical transformations taking place in key countries
of the Global South. In the last two decades the concept of agribusi-
ness, which had been originally introduced in the 1950s at the time
of Fordist agriculture in the USA, had mutated and expanded in
order to encapsulate agriculture production along the lines of the
neoliberal canon of flexible accumulation and business-friendly
state interventions. It meant a partial and uneven replacement of
rural development strategies in favour of agri-food liberalisation
E-mail address: a.ioris@ed.ac.uk
and largely dominated by transnational corporations (Clapp and
Fuchs, 2009). Consequently, most of today’s agriculture activities
can be described as the encroachment of neoliberal capitalism
upon rural areas and production, processing and distribution of
agri-food goods and related services. Examples include a number
of techno-economic innovations introduced by neoliberalised
agribusiness sectors – e.g. GMOs, digital farming technologies
and satellite guided machinery – as well as new dynamics of pro-
duction – e.g. land and gene grabs, dispossession of common land,
pervasive financialisation, the creation of the World Trade
Organisation in 1995 and the decisive role of global corporations
– which combine old and new strategies to renovate capitalism
and minimise socioecological obstacles to capital accumulation.
One the one hand, agriculture as neoliberal agribusiness has
achieved considerable results in the last three decades, both in
terms of additional areas under cultivation, intensification of

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.05.004
0016-7185/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 A.A.R. Ioris / Geoforum 63 (2015) 1–4
production and complex market integration. The aim of neoliber-
alised agriculture is to maximise production and profitability and
suppress income gains by the labouring classes in a way that
reconstructed agriculture as a ‘world farm’ (McMichael, 2010).
On the other hand, however, these are also activities characterised
by contradictions, failures and limitations at the local, national and
global scales. The neoliberalisation of food and agriculture was a
deliberate attempt to fix the systemic crisis of the Fordist
agri-food regime without preventing the re-emergence of instabil-
ity, protest, socio-ecological degradation and, ultimately, legiti-
macy deficit (Wolf and Bonanno, 2014). Never before so much
food has been produced and so much space has been used by farm-
ers, but at the same time record amounts of food are wasted every
day, a significant proportion of the global population struggle to
maintain minimum levels of nutrition while a comparable percent-
age suffer from the consequences of obesity (Patel, 2008). To be
sure, the hegemonic neoliberalisation of agribusiness is less about
food, nutrition and well-being – the alleged objectives of the rural
development policies promoted during most of the 20th Century –
as it is increasingly about short-term capital accumulation
strategies and removing the obstacles for the spreading of
market-based globalisation. The complexity of the neoliberal
agri-food regime is particularly evident in relation to the uneven
geographical development of the capitalist economy and needs to
be situated in the wider context of the world-ecology of capitalism
(Moore, 2010).
The socioecological contradictions of neoliberalised agribusi-
ness can be noticeably observed in the case of contemporary
Brazil and its burgeoning agribusiness-based economy (Ioris and
Ioris, 2013). The country is increasingly perceived as an agricul-
tural powerhouse that, in principle, has a lot to offer in terms of
reducing the prospects of a looming, increasingly global, food cri-
sis. Due to sustained promotion campaigns and the emphasis given
by public policy-making, the term ‘agribusiness’ has a particularly
meaning in Brazil and is more widely used in common public
debates than in other regions of the world. Governments and busi-
ness associations portray the advance of agribusiness in Brazil as
the embodiment of the most progressive elements of an emerging
economy that is part of the selected group of BRIC countries.
Nonetheless, neoliberal agribusiness essentially constitutes a late,
already obsolete, type of modernity that replicates many mistakes
from elsewhere in the country and other parts of the world.
Starting from the realisation that Brazil is one of the most relevant
and intriguing theatres where the neoliberalisation of agribusiness
is rapidly unfolding, this article is rather an invitation, or, maybe a
provocation, for critical research. The proposed agenda of study
should benefit from the politico-ecological work produced by
geographers in recent years (to a significant extent it was
rehearsed in the pages of Geoforum, as in Guthman, 2008;
Marsden et al., 1992; Page, 2002; Potter and Tilzey, 2007;
Shillington, 2013), which could help to crack the nut of agribusi-
ness and food insecurity (certainly towards higher levels of food
sovereignty). It must be an interdisciplinary dialogue around the
fact that agribusiness is one of the most relevant battlegrounds
of socioecological politics in the world today, as the Brazilian expe-
rience vividly illustrates.
2. The unpalatable agribusiness of Brazil
As mentioned above, the intensification of the Brazilian agricul-
ture constitutes a privileged chapter in the history-geography of
contemporary global agribusiness. Because of new production
areas and productivity gains, the country has consolidated its
position as a global leader and even as a ‘model’ of commercial,
integrated crop production (Collier, 2008). The relevance of
agribusiness for the country’s economy is undeniable, as it
accounts now for approximately 25% of GDP, 35% of exports and
40% of jobs (MAPA, 2012). Particularly with the economic slow-
down since 2010, agribusiness has been seen as an island of pros-
perity and economic dynamism in a national context of losses and
lack of investment. The sector has played a particular role in terms
of the reserve of foreign currency and macroeconomic stability
(Serigati, 2013). Agribusiness has been the decisive economic sec-
tor able to respond more quickly than industry and mining to new
opportunities and, as a result, can help with the trade surplus that
the country desperately needs vis-à-vis the widening current
account deficit. A related phenomenon has been the rapid appear-
ance of large Brazilian transnational corporations in the agri-food
sector, such as JBS, BR Food, Marfrig and Amaggi, which are among
the largest and most aggressive players in the world. Not unex-
pectedly Brazil has been a strong advocate of free market globali-
sation and has pushed for further liberalisation of agriculture
trade (Hopewell, 2013).
Neo-liberalised agribusiness has effectively become the ‘green
anchor’ of the Brazilian economy (Acselrad, 2012), which has had
also perverse consequences as the country has faced progressive
deindustrialisation, reliance on foreign investments and rising
imports of intermediate inputs and capital goods – by and large,
from China. Between 2000 and 2010, the export of primary goods
increased from 25% to 45%, while manufactured goods declined
from 56% to 43% (Delgado, 2012). However, all these discursive
and material development still need to be properly understood
by critical scholars, particularly to connect with the specific
situation of localities and regions, and the broader macroeconomic
trends. Against the rhetoric of progress and creativity, a more
critical examination would question the actual contribution of
agribusiness for local, regional and national economy.
Neo-liberalised agribusiness has many new features when com-
pared with previous, nationalistic period of agriculture modernisa-
tion in the 1960s and 1970s, but it also betrays the strong elements
of social exclusion, authoritarianism and deception that have gov-
erned economic development in the country. A deeper interpreta-
tion should be able to focus on the idiosyncratic, apparently
paradoxical, combination of little innovations, or transgressions,
that take place in the context of capitalist relations of production
and reproduction. As in other parts of the globe, neo-liberalised
agribusiness in Brazil has sparked huge controversies about its
actual beneficiaries, evident vulnerabilities and ambiguous pro-
spects. Although the sector makes use of the appealing symbolism
of triumph and modernisation, the evolution of agribusiness has
actually served to unify the interests of rural conservative groups
and renovate processes of political hegemony and class domina-
tion (Bruno, 2009).
Especially the fast advance of agribusiness towards the central
and northern states of Brazil has been associated with severe envi-
ronmental, cultural and socioeconomic impacts, including defor-
estation, violence against peasants and Indians, marked cases of
state capture and corruption. One of the main areas for the expan-
sion of agribusiness in the world has been the Centre-West region
of Brazil, especially in the State of Mato Grosso, which has more
than half of its economy based on agribusiness-related activities
(IMEA, 2014). Mato Grosso has in excess of 10 million of hectares
of soybean, cotton and maize that have replaced areas previously
covered by cerrado [savannah] and Amazon forest ecosystems.
From being a marginal, almost forgotten area in the middle of
South America, Mato Grosso is now at the core of national eco-
nomic life and plays a key role in Brazilian exports and global mar-
kets; for instance, it responds for around 10% of global soybean
production. The continuous increase of the agribusiness sector
happens in tandem with the opening of new roads and towns,
the renewal of fluvial ports and the construction of large, medium
and small hydropower schemes. At the interpersonal level,
 A.A.R. Ioris / Geoforum 63 (2015) 1–4
intensive agribusiness dominates the landscape in large areas of
Mato Grosso, but it depends on the perpetual re-enactment of
dreams (merged with novels forms of violence and frustrations)
related to the promises of rapid enrichment and social prestige.
High expectations are needed to motive the conquest and transfor-
mation of the territory to give way to crop production. Overall, the
rapid increase of agribusiness activities in Mato Grosso has been an
important edge of both the renovation of capitalist institutions, i.e.
globalised transactions, maximised use of territorial resources,
novel forms of political legitimisation, and the reintroduction or
reinforcement of old practices of the pre-industrial or early indus-
trial phase of capitalism. In other words, the brutal appropriation
of the commons, commodification of features previously beyond
market transactions and even cases of slavery and forced labour.
Despite the intense rate of transformations that are currently
reshaping its geography, Mato Grosso is still largely understudied
and is underrepresented in broader academic research. It is espe-
cially important to refine existing theoretical and methodological
approaches to allow a critical reinterpretation of the complex sta-
tus and uncertain direction of neo-liberalised agribusiness in the
region. Agribusiness in the centre of Brazil is a true kaleidoscopic
phenomenon that mirrors, combines and recreates images and
the best and worst materialities of different times and locations.
It is both highly advanced in terms of the rhetoric of efficiency
and membership of the BRIC group, but at the same time repro-
duces demagogic strategies adopted by the military when their
national security project started to fail in the mid-1970s
(see Schmink and Wood, 1992). In that context, Mato Grosso is
at the frontier of the advance of agribusiness, it is an area where
contemporary capitalism is showing it most profound contradic-
tions, abilities and, ultimately, failures. The peculiar dialectics of
globalisation taking place at the frontier, including processes of
trans-nationalisation, displacement and mystification, are firmly
mediated by structures inherited from the past, which create a
complex pattern that are spatially and temporally heterogeneous.
It is at the frontier, such as in Mato Grosso, that the politico-
economic institutions of rural neoliberalism can expand and have,
in some measure, a life of its own. Similar to the expansion to the
West of USA more than a century ago, ethical and legal safeguards
tend to be suspended or overlooked due to the alleged need to
occupy the adverse territory and then sustain the production of
the most marketable and profitable goods. Finally, there is also a
repeated, but curious, attack on the apparatus of the Brazilian state
by agribusiness farmers, exactly those who have been the major
beneficiaries of state investments and regional development poli-
cies. This betrays an inbuilt opportunism and peculiar production
of tailored market friendly rationalities, which are oddly promoted
in-between the demands of transnational corporations and rural
elites (Ioris, 2015). The state apparatus remains the main ally
and the preferred villain of neoliberal agribusiness that is both con-
stantly despised and perennially under pressure.
3. In search of critical thinking
Brazil represents an emblematic case of neo-liberalised agricul-
ture in need of further investigation. That is for two main reasons:
first, the steady expansion of soybean and other agriculture
commodities towards central savannahs and southern sections of
the Amazon forest; and second, the fact that agribusiness exports
are one of the most strategic sectors of the mainstream project
to integrate the country into globalised markets. Furthermore,
the contentious features of agribusiness are also relevant to help
to understand the challenging risks and responsibilities of agricul-
ture in the contemporary, increasingly urbanised and technical
world. Corporate, industrial-scale agribusiness practices in Brazil
and in Mato Grosso bring back some spectral elements of
3
capitalism, which never disappeared and in which the invisible
becomes visible again (as discussed by Derrida, 1994). It is a phe-
nomenon of multiple dialectics that needs further theoretical,
methodological and investigative elaboration. Contemporary
agribusiness is a sectoral activity carried out by a highly specialised
professional category, but it has had major macroeconomic reper-
cussions such as the mitigation of the failures of socioeconomic
policies promoted by populist governments subordinate to the pre-
vailing neoliberal paradigm. It is simultaneously based on the long
history of territorial politics introduced in the middle of the 20th
Century, but also borrows and uses the most advanced technolo-
gies developed in Brazil and beyond. Agribusiness leaders claim
that because of the intensification and the supposed rationality
of production their activity is rescuing or ameliorating the image
of development in the country, but in practice the results continue
to be short-lived and are mostly appropriated by old and new elite
groups.
All those dialectical processes mean that the neo-liberalisation
of agribusiness has been developing as a very special case of the
globalised food regime. Due to the scale of production and magni-
tude of these processes, it could be said that Brazil is creating and
resiliently embarking on its own model of agriculture, that is, an
authentic Brazilian agri-food regime. This idiosyncratic food
regime strangely mixes the unfashionable practices of develop-
ment as production that characterised the Fordist phase of agricul-
ture with the highly financialised agriculture of globalised markets.
One main aspect that deserves to be properly investigated is its
convoluted relation with the state apparatus. Given that the state
receives the great share of the daily blame for the problems of
agribusiness, such as the cost and quality of transport, the lack of
friendly loans or subsidies, and its inability to resolve pending
agrarian conflicts, it is also needs to be registered that the state
is ultimate safety net that in bad years should compensate for
too much or too low rain, diseases, low prices, etc. The activity is
not without contradictions. The national agribusiness sector is pro-
fessionally organised and aggressively lobby all the agencies and
layers of the state, but it has increasingly realised the socioecolog-
ical limitations of the sector, such as the growing incidence of
insects and diseases, climatic change and land-based struggles.
As much as sophisticated technology and precision machinery,
agribusiness is increasingly associated with clashes with
non-unionised peasants and labourers, indigenous groups and
descendents of slaves and the prospects are grim and likely to
aggravate the level of violence.
In order to understand the national experience, it is not suffi-
cient to talk about a Brazilian food regime, but the very concept
of regime needs to be tempered with attention to localised trends,
multiple forms of historical agency and the failures of the food
sector at different geographical scales. As succinctly examined
above, the modernisation of agribusiness in Brazil is an important
component of wider politico-economic trends, and both sector and
general processes are fraught with a growing number of risks and
uncertainties. In that context, the most dramatic circumstances,
and most interesting for academics to study, are at the frontier of
the expansion of agribusiness in the Mato Grosso state, where spa-
tially and temporally patterns are heterogeneous and largely
unpredictable. Agribusiness is especially promoted at the agricul-
ture frontier in Brazil because it is in itself an economic, ecological
and ethical frontier. At the frontier, the politico-economic institu-
tions of neoliberalism can expand and have, in some measure, a life
of its own. As argued by Martins (2009), the ‘totality of the frontier’
must be seen as a peculiar space of intolerance, ambition and all
too often, death, but also some residual conceptualisation of hope.
Therefore, critical research into the complexity of contemporary
agribusiness should really be about the political economy of alter-
natives to the highly vulnerable and unsatisfactory approaches to
4 A.A.R. Ioris / Geoforum 63 (2015) 1–4
food and agriculture that prevail today and, what is worse, con-
tinue to expand unabated.
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