How has neoliberal globalization altered the contours of Brazil’s agri-food industries? According to the contributors of this well-grounded and illuminating collection, neoliberalism has strengthened the hand of corporate capital, created larger farms, fostered an unsustainable form of productivist agriculture, and has curtailed the state’s ability to address the needs of family farmers, peasant producers, and minorities who strive to make a living from the land. This book is a valuable resource for scholars—including sociologists, geographers, political economists, and policy analysts—seeking a conceptually rich understanding of agri-food transformations in contemporary Brazil.

Geoffrey Lawrence, University of Queensland

The product of a longstanding international collaboration but also firmly rooted in a Brazilian research network dedicated for over three decades to the study of Brazilian agri-food in the context of globalization, this book provides a much needed reflection on the State and the agri-food system in the years of the Lula and Dilma governments (2003-2016). Using the varied lenses of State capitalism, neo-developmentalism and neo-liberalism, the ways in which these Governments promoted policies which simultaneously strengthened large-scale agribusiness, and the family farming sector are subjected to detailed analysis. While the Brazilian soy sector has received most international attention, the chapters in the book have the added merit of focusing on social movements (the rural women’s movement) and markets (the fresh fruits export poles in the Brazilian Northeast, aquaculture, and palm oil) which are less familiar to non-Brazilian readers. A chapter on the now-notorious JBS meat company is not the least of this book´s attractions.

John Wilkinson, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro