TRANSFORMATIONS OF BRAZILIAN AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURE RESEARCH

Abstract

The Brazilian agriculture has known, since the 1950s, a period of intense modernization that is tightly linked to the country's processes of industrialization and urbanization. The vigorous increase in numerous productions is indeed linked to the conquest of new frontiers like the Cerrados, but a remarkable fact is that, over the last 20 years, it is primarily through an increase in yields that Brazil has become one of the major producers and exporters of agricultural products. A very large part (80%) of the farms has nevertheless not benefited from the process of modernization, particularly in the North and Northwest regions. The analysis of farm revenues, taking or not into account the redemption of capital, shows that the payment of labor is extremely low in the majority of the farms. The viability of these farms is, at term, endangered. To face this situation, research must tackle a few technological and methodological challenges, and the history of collaboration between France and Brazil in this field can give a few tracks for the future.