Eco-Agrarian Question: agrarian extractivism, climate change and deforestation in Brazil

Abstract

Environmental issues, in particular climate change, have assumed increasing urgency, and have become even more acute with the Covid-19 pandemic and the globally rise of hunger and inequality. Despite this urgency, international demands and prices for agricultural and mineral commodities have been a driving force behind the expansion of the agricultural frontier (changes in land use), particularly with the increase in monocultures, extensive livestock farming and mineral extraction for export. This has generated debates, studies and reflections in Political Economy, Political Ecology, among other areas of knowledge, but has this urgency raised reflections and research on the importance of land and the agrarian issue? Based on some political (dis)agreements and measures, and in dialogue with international literature, this text seeks to contribute to the so-called Critical Agrarian Studies, formulating, conceptually and politically, a notion of “eco-agrarian issue”, analyzing and critically interpreting agrarian extractivism in the Brazilian agricultural frontier.

Keywords:
Land; environmental question; agrarian extractivism; agricultural frontier; green grabbing