The expansion of agribusiness in the Amazon: spatial anticipation, processes of dispossession in the attempt creation of AMACRO and expansion of the agricultural frontier

Abstract

In 2019, EMBRAPA organized the first meeting to define the creation proposal for AMACRO (an acronym for Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia), a regional model for attracting development focused on Brazilian agribusiness production. The article aims to understand how the discourse and the attempt to create AMACRO, in a context legitimized by the then Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro, triggered processes of destruction in the Amazon rainforest, unleashing conflicts with local populations, as well as understanding how agribusiness acts strategically in creating regions favorable to its enterprises and its ideologies in agricultural frontier areas. The article is divided into four parts: first, an analysis to understand how the structuring of regions occurs in the process of expanding agricultural frontiers, through the actions of the Brazilian state and the justifications used for the creation of AMACRO; secondly, the process of the agricultural frontier towards the Amazon; third, the current situation of AMACRO, with regard to the growth of conflicts, the advance of deforestation, the intensification of cattle ranching and the arrival of soya; and for the last part, we will reflect on the impacts caused, specially in the environmental sphere, by the expansion of the frontier, which is not only agricultural, but is also characterized as a toxic frontier.

Keywords:
Amazonia; agricultural frontier; agribusiness; accumulation by dispossession; conflict.