March 10th, 2022 Brazil at a Crossroads: Environmental and Food Politics Under the Bolsonaro Regime
Talk description: Soy plays a major role in the development of Brazilian agribusiness, and in turn in Brazilian geopolitical power as well. It is the basis for much Brazilian land ownership in neighboring countries, and extension of political influence in Africa. It was also instrumental in Brazil’s insertion into a “new multi-polar world order”, balancing trade with China even while the US dollar and North Atlantic transnational companies maintained control over soybean markets. But recent events call for a reevaluation of the geopolitics of Brazilian soy. First, access to abundant Brazilian soy enabled China to withstand the trade war with the US, responding with counter-tariffs on US soy. But while this could have enabled Brazil to extract geopolitical gains, the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil fractured the political power of the soy sector. While, soy farmers and truckers defend Bolsonaro’s domestic and international agenda, restraining ties with China and accusing Europeans of blocking Brazilian development through environmentalist charades, soy processing and trading companies have broken with Bolsonaro, who undermines their efforts to attract Chinese capital for infrastructure construction in Brazil while projecting a palatable eco-modernist image of Brazilian agribusiness for European markets. Thus, a critical geopolitics of Brazilian soy calls for more nuanced account of the transnational class articulations and global environmental politics that shape and are shaped by this extraordinary oilseed.
