ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL POLICIES FOR THE RURAL DEVELOPMENT OF CERRADO AREAS IN BRAZIL: EVALUATION AND PERPECTIVES

Abstract

From the starting point of the relations between the rural and industrial sectors, this dissertation analyses the role of the state in structuring a specific pattern of agrarian development in Brazil. We tried to show that government policies have been crucial for the generation of agrarian rent of type II and for the acceleration of the process of diferentiation and development of agrarian capitalism. In addition the policies have pursued a redefinition of the way that the agricultural sector is inserted in the process of capitalist accumulation, mainly through technological modernization and in a gradual transformation of the agricultural sector in a locus of capital operation. Thus, the mechanisms of official agricultural policy tend, generally, to maintain a concentrated structure of land tenure, to deepen the linkages between agriculture and industry, to exclude small-scale agricultural production from the development process and, finally, to accelerate the process of proletarization of rural workers. We had as our object of analysis, of a real situation of change, the social and economic consequences of some rural development programs, which were fundamental both for the potentialization of productive forces in the countryside and for the recovery and incorporation in the national economy of large Savannah-type aveas.